The Secret to Seduction (4 page)

She cleared her throat. “It must be terribly uncomfortable to be at the mercy of the sort of uncontrollable passion that leads to duels.”

There was a silence as everyone’s head swiveled in unison to regard her.

“Do you really think so, Miss Fairleigh?” This came from the earl again. It was unsettling to suddenly be the focus of his blue gaze. A bit like having two comets aimed in her direction. But his question seemed sincere enough. That is, if one discounted the curious glint in his eye.

“Oh, yes.” She said it gently, in case he thought she was judging him. Too late realizing he’d allegedly killed a man in a duel.

“So you’ve never been ‘at the mercy of uncontrollable passions’ yourself, Miss Fairleigh?” The earl sounded gravely, solicitously curious.

She lifted her fork and turned it in her hand nervously. Round and round. “I count myself fortunate to be possessed of an even temperament,” she said modestly. “It is simply how I was born. However, I feel great compassion for those who suffer extremes of feeling. I imagine it is dreadfully inconvenient, at times, and must cause considerable pain on occasion.”

The earl was now staring at her with the oddest expression. Something akin to fascination.

Next to her, Mr. Wyndham coughed once into his fist.

“You are very gracious indeed to offer compassion to those buffeted by their own animal natures, Miss Fairleigh,” the earl said somberly, at last.

Sabrina wasn’t certain how to respond.

“Thank you,” she decided to say, tentatively.

Mr. Wyndham coughed again.

“Lady Mary tells me you hail from Tinbury. Your father is the vicar there?”

Well, apparently she’d at last captured the earl’s full attention. She was no longer certain that she wanted it.

“Yes, Lord Rawden.”

“And what sort of pastimes do you enjoy in Tinbury, Miss Fairleigh?” Another sincere-sounding, easy-
sounding
question. And yet there was little of ease about this man. Something restless, probing, hummed beneath the surface of every word.

“Well, I like to visit the poorer families in town, you see. We collect clothes and food for them at the vicarage—everyone in town brings them round—and then we take them round to people like Mrs. Dewberry, and Mr. Shumley, who”—she cleared her throat again—“who drinks.” She lowered her voice a little, and said the last word delicately.

“A sinner is Mr. Shumley, then?” The earl had lowered his voice, too, to almost a hush. One of his dark brows made an inquisitive upward leap.

Given that the earl was allegedly versed in a multitude of sins, Sabrina suspected she would need to answer gingerly. “Drink happens to be Mr. Shumley’s particular weakness, Lord Rawden. That, and he believes he is King George.”

There was a burst of laughter at this at the table.

“Coincidentally, he
does
have that particular weakness in common with His Majesty,” the earl said, and smiled at her.

That smile had washed the carefulness and boredom right from his face, and the stark beauty of it was as startling as a slap. Sabrina’s eyes flew wide. And then she quickly looked down at her plate again, an attempt to regain her composure.

“And do you enjoy life in Tinbury, on the whole, Miss Fairleigh?”

So he hadn’t quite finished with her yet, then. She wasn’t entirely a fool: she doubted a man who lived in London would be terribly interested in life in Tinbury.

She looked up at him again, braving that handsome face. “It’s quiet and very pleasant,” she said politely. “I should be content there for the rest of my life, if I did not also hope to do some good as a missionary in a faraway land, perhaps in Africa. I should like to help others less fortunate, you see, as a missionary.”

“Helping is indeed commendable, Miss Fairleigh.” The earl raised his glass to her.

How would you know?
She was tempted to ask.

“Missionary is a wonderful position,” Wyndham volunteered somberly.

Mary was beaming at Sabrina, apparently proud she was the subject of the earl’s praise.

But Sabrina wondered why Signora Licari looked so very amused, her sable eyes bright as lit candles. She might be a country girl, but she didn’t particularly enjoy being the subject of mirth she didn’t quite understand. Particularly from this beautiful woman.

Compassion,
she reminded herself.

“Speaking of helping, I should like another helping of pork,” Wyndham said cheerily.

After dinner, Sophia Licari was importuned to sing. The request came from Mr. Mumphrey, and was humbly delivered.

Signora Licari placed a delicate index finger against her chin and tilted her head, her eyes going abstracted. Pondering the question, perhaps.

“I do not think tonight,” she pronounced at last, as though she’d been asked to predict whether or not it might rain.

And so instead Mr. Mumphrey set about playing the cello and Mrs. Wessel played the flute, and a pleasant little Bach composition that Sabrina recognized floated out over the grand drawing room. But no one seemed to be obliged to simply sit and listen. The other members of the party took up quiet pastimes. Mary and her husband had agreed to play cards with Signora Licari and Mr. Wyndham, but Sabrina had never learned the game they were playing, so she decided to read instead, in the room with everyone else, because it seemed the companionable thing to do.

She had found a comfortable chair, and had fetched the Maria Edgeworth book.

She’d read two pages when she’d looked up to find that the earl had settled down at a small, elegant desk very near her, a quill between his fingers, foolscap spread before him.

Instantly, for some reason, it seemed more difficult to breathe. It was as though he took up more air than the usual person, and so there was less of it to breathe now that he was near. Or perhaps it was just that the air seemed sharper, somehow, like the air outside when they’d arrived this morning.

He seemed to take as much notice of her as he did the lamp on the desk as his quill began to dance over the page. So Sabrina ducked her head and began to read again.

She’d only managed to get to the bottom of the second page when some sort of disturbance in the atmosphere caused her to look up.

He was staring at her. Directly, unblinkingly, fixedly at her.

Good heavens, but his eyes were astoundingly blue.

She smiled tentatively.

His expression didn’t change. He, in fact, didn’t blink.

“Are you…are you writing a poem?” she ventured.

The earl blinked then. And the faintest of creases appeared between his eyes, as if he couldn’t quite place how he knew her, or was surprised that she would dare to speak to him at all. As though a dog or a cat had just asked him about his poetry.

“Why, yes.” He sounded mildly amused. Indulgent. “I
am
writing a poem.” He looked at her a moment longer, almost appraisingly. “I was trying to think of a rhyme for skin.”

Whoosh.
Heat scorched Sabrina’s face from her collar to her hairline.

The earl returned his gaze to the page. But not before she saw the flash of a tiny smile.

The
devil.

“No, you weren’t, Lord Rawden,” she said firmly.

He looked up, surprised. “Wasn’t I?”

“No. If you’d said, perhaps, that you were trying to think of a rhyme for ‘lemon,’ I might have believed you. Shin, din, grin, sin,” she added pointedly. “I believe you were trying to be . . .”

She trailed off when she realized, to her horror, she was actually scolding the earl.

He was smiling a little. “Incorrigible?” he completed helpfully. “Very well. Lemon, did you say? I shall take that under consideration the next time I decide to be incorrigible.”

And then he lowered his head to his work again, and it was clear she was once again forgotten.

A bit belatedly Sabrina recalled that she perhaps ought to ingratiate herself with the earl, in order to help support Geoffrey’s petition for funding of the mission she hoped to share with him.

She took a deep breath, and gingerly, as if holding her hand out for a bear to sniff, she ventured a conciliatory question. “Do you find writing poetry pleasurable, Lord Rawden?”

He jerked his head up again, his eyebrows drawn ever so slightly together. As if he wondered that she dared interrupt. “God, no,” he said dismissively. “It eases pain.”

He dropped his head.

Sabrina stared at that handsome head bent over his page of foolscap and knew an unfamiliar ire. She knew he wasn’t
precisely
obligated to be polite, as he was an earl and a notorious one at that. Still, she wasn’t accustomed to being completely ignored or dismissed—quite the opposite in fact, at least in Tinbury—and she was a little surprised to discover how much she minded.

“?‘It eases pain,’?” she mimicked under her breath. “How very dramatic.” She lowered her head to her book again.

The earl’s head came up very slowly this time.

“What did you say, Miss Fairleigh?”

Oh, no.

She stared at him in what she hoped was an artless way. “I . . .” She stopped.

“It rather sounded like: ‘How very dramatic,’?” he encouraged on a drawl.

Sabrina was unwilling to corroborate this. She was certain her scarlet cheeks were all the answer he needed, anyway.

“Have you read any of my poetry, Miss Fairleigh?” A mild question.

“No!” she said rather vehemently, before she realized her vehemence might be construed as impolite. Then again, it was best she make it clear precisely what sort of female she happened to be.

“Good. I daresay you wouldn’t understand it, and it would only confuse you.” The earl dropped his head again to his page. His pen scratched a few more words across the page.

She should leave it at that. She really should.

“I read English well enough,” she said coolly.

“Passion is another language altogether.” He tossed this out without bothering to lift his head from his foolscap.

She’d been in the presence of this notorious man scarcely a day, and already one of the seven deadly sins had her firmly in its grip. Later, she would blame pride for what she said next.

“I’m tempted to roll my eyes, Lord Rawden, but then I would be unable to read my book.”

The earl lifted his head slowly, slowly up then. He studied her at length. And finally, a faint smile began to hover about his mouth, and his face registered a peculiar sort of approval.

“Unable to read your book? You haven’t turned more than two pages since you’ve sat down, Miss Fairleigh. Do you read so very slowly? Or does my presence disconcert you? If it’s the latter, I do apologize.”

She’d thought poets possessed clouds for brains. This one possessed a rapier.

“You’re not sorry, Lord Rawden,” she said evenly.

Oh, and at that, he smiled fully. And what a smile it was: genuinely, brilliantly pleased with both her and with himself. The kind of smile that made his eyes all but vanish and lines ray from their corners.

And
smack
: just like that, her wits scattered like billiard balls.

“No, I suppose I’m not sorry.” He continued to smile at her.

She really ought to look away, or smile in return, or say something. Anything. But she hadn’t any wits left. Staring was all that was left to her.

Before her eyes, his smile drifted away, and his expression became more pensive.

“Since we are chatting, Miss Fairleigh, and since you are, as you say, familiar with the English language, I wonder if I might trouble you for some assistance with my poetry.”

It was very nearly a humble entreaty, and helping was more familiar to her than sparring. “I know very little about poetry, Lord Rawden, but I should be happy to try.”

“Well…,” he began almost diffidently. “I am writing a poem about seduction.”

He might have said: “I am writing a poem about forks.” It made the word less dangerous, somehow. Which in a way, she knew, made it even more dangerous. Still, this was the sort of language this man used. And as she would with luck become a missionary on another continent one day, perhaps she ought to view it in a “When in Rome” light, and try to speak his language.

“I’d thought you’d already written a book about sed…seduction, Lord Rawden.”

Too late she realized that this revealed she knew all about his scandalous volume.

He leaned slowly back in his chair then, with the air of one settling into his favorite topic.

“Oh, one can never really finish writing about seduction, Miss Fairleigh. I find I’ve a good deal more to say on the topic.” He made it sound nearly academic.

Sabrina thought of the kiss she hoped she’d get from Geoffrey one day, and of the shadowy things that took place in a marriage bed, which were giggled about and spoken of only in the very, very broadest of euphemisms among the girls she knew.

But then there had been a girl in the village of Tinbury who had disappeared under a wave of whispers and scandal: she’d been ruined, it had been said. All because of seduction.