The Secret to Seduction (6 page)

Geoffrey settled the vase carefully back onto the stand that seemed specifically made just for it.

At the vicarage, Sabrina usually stuffed bowls and jars with flowers, when there was time for such frivolity. Being poor required so much time. All the careful economies, the picking of threads out of dresses to resew them with the worn and faded side inside, using one poor chicken as thoroughly as possible, from eggs to dinner to soup stock to feathers for pillows.

He looked up at Sabrina. “Did you know, Sabrina, that once upon a time Rhys was nearly penniless?”

This seemed impossible, given the house they were now standing in. “Truly?”

“Truly. Many years ago the Gillray family fortune was actually in great…disrepair.” It seemed a carefully chosen word. “But Rhys came into money when he was about eighteen years old. I never did know quite how it happened. And it seems he has managed to create . . .” Geoffrey paused. “Well, you can see what Rhys has done with it since.”

“Is poetry as lucrative as that?” It was a bit of a jest.

“One wonders.” Geoffrey wasn’t really listening, and clearly not in the mood to jest. He strolled over to the carved mantelpiece and absently traced a finger over it: leaves, grapes, acorns. “He bought a commission. Earned money that way. But no doubt investments also played a role.” He sounded faintly sardonic. As though he’d little faith in the fiscal rewards of poetry.

“What was he like when he was young?” Sabrina was surprised that she truly wanted to know. “Did he show any signs of becoming…well . . .” She blushed. “The Libertine?”

The young curate immediately stopped his restless perusal of the room and swiveled his gaze to Sabrina with an intensity that reminded her rather suddenly of his cousin.

“Sabrina…how much do you know about his poetry?”

Good heavens, but Geoffrey sounded awfully interested. His dark eyes were alert.

“Not very much,” she said hurriedly. “It’s . . .” She cleared her throat. “Prurient, I believe. That’s all I know.”

“Salacious, in fact,” Geoffrey agreed, with what sounded surprisingly like a certain amount of relish. He still looked rather…bright-eyed. He was gazing at her with an expression she was having difficulty deciphering.

“Have
you
read it?” she ventured, since he didn’t seem inclined to say anything.

“Some,” he admitted. He hadn’t blinked in nearly a minute.

She quickly decided to change the subject.

“Is he a generous man, the earl, despite his reputation?”

Geoffrey came a few steps closer. “I truly don’t know what kind of man he has become, Sabrina. I haven’t spoken to my cousin in years. I can only hope he will find it in his heart to support a missionary enterprise as well as…opera singers and painters and actresses and…that fellow with the cello and his great redheaded paramour who departed this morning.” There was a whiff of judgment about his words.

Paramour.
Goodness, Geoffrey was a curate, but he’d used that word nearly as easily as the earl had used the word “seduction.”

“When we arrived yesterday, I believe he was arguing with Signora Sophia Licari,” Sabrina said in a lowered voice, as though confiding a scandal. Since Geoffrey shared her even temperament, he would probably appreciate the story. “They seemed to be having a rather serious conversation outside in the courtyard, anyhow.”

“Signora Sophia Licari? The
opera
singer?” Geoffrey sounded amazed. And truthfully, just a little amused as well, which was a bit puzzling. “Is she here?”

“She is. Geoffrey, do you know whether she is truly his mistress? I heard she was his mistress. I heard that he
lived
with his mistress.”

Geoffrey froze. “Where on earth would
you
hear such a thing, Sabrina?”

“Mary,” she confessed.

Geoffrey’s entire attention was focused upon her now, his eyes strangely assessing. He took a few slow steps closer still. She’d in fact never stood quite so close to him before.

“Sabrina, if you would permit me a liberty . . .” His voice had become low and urgent.

She frowned a little, confused. “It’s not a liberty, Geoffrey, if you beg permission.”

His hand rose, and he placed it on her arm. Her first reaction was puzzlement; she looked at his hand resting on her arm with a faint furrow of her brow, as if wondering how such a thing had gotten there.

And then all at once it occurred to her that Geoffrey intended to kiss her.

It was done—his head bent, his lips touched warmly to hers for a moment, his head returned to where it had originated—almost before she could realize that it was happening, or muster a shortness of breath or a quicker heartbeat.

And suddenly she put her fingers up to her mouth, a delayed response; her lips still remembered the pressure of his lips. That’s when her face, at last, began to grow warm, and she felt a little glow in the center of her chest.

She stared at him. It hadn’t been unpleasant. Still, kisses were so very controversial, discussed only with giggles or feigned swooning or dire warnings, Sabrina had expected much more than…well, warmth, she supposed.

“Sabrina…forgive me . . .” Geoffrey’s voice was tense, but he seemed pleased. A bit aquiver. As though he’d very much enjoyed what he’d just done.

She was envious: she’d rather hoped her first kiss would make her feel those things, too.

Perhaps in a few more moments it would.

“There’s nothing to forgive, Geoffrey,” she said quickly. “After all, you did request permission for a liberty.”

He smiled a little at this. Perhaps when Geoffrey was more at ease about his future—hopefully
their
future—he would feel freer to laugh. And she prayed the Earl of Rawden would find it in his heart to support his cousin’s dream, so that she might share it, too.

For surely a kiss meant that Geoffrey felt there was an understanding between them. She allowed herself this hope, felt it flame just a little in her chest.

She wondered if it had been
his
first kiss. She gazed up at him for a moment, and felt a peculiar disorientation: for a tick of the clock, he seemed entirely a stranger, and she’d known him almost a year.

She could only imagine how dangerous The Libertine’s actual poetry was for a woman who lacked her own strength of will, if a mere mention of it—perhaps in conjunction with the word “mistress”—had heated Geoffrey to the point where he’d burst out into a kiss.

“What do you suppose we’ll do this evening for entertainment?” Her way of changing the subject.

“Perhaps you should play for everyone,” Geoffrey suggested.

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly!” This was his cue to flatter her.

He obliged. “You play very well, Sabrina.” Indulgently said.

She occasionally played almost
too
well, in fact, losing herself in the sweep of music, finding fresh pathos in a hymn the Tinbury parishioners had heard dozens of times before, in the process causing eyes to moisten or religious fervor to build to an unprecedented pitch. It was one of those things about Sabrina that caused the Vicar Fairleigh’s forehead furrow to deepen.

“I will play if requested, but no doubt everyone here will find my playing rather ordinary. Do you suppose Signora Licari will sing?”

Belatedly she recalled that Signora Licari was allegedly the earl’s mistress, and she wondered if mentioning her would make Geoffrey restless again, and result in another kiss. “For I’ve heard Signora Licari has a splendid voice,” she added, because, after all, Sabrina wasn’t entirely adverse to another kiss, and she did want to be fully aware of her next one. Perhaps if she were to get better at it there would be more to the sensation.

This particular cue Geoffrey missed.“No doubt. I cannot imagine that even a singer of her fame can refuse an earl if he were to ask her to sing.”

“But Mr. Mumphrey asked her to sing last night. She said she could not.”

“
Could
not?” Geoffrey looked puzzled.

“Those were her words.”

“As though her voice was otherwise engaged for the evening?” Geoffrey sounded mystified, and he was smiling a little.

Sabrina smiled, too, and felt pleased with their concord. They would never understand the caprices of artistic people, and this was as it should be. She and Geoffrey had a higher calling.

It was amusing, Rhys thought, as he backed from the doorway of the yellow sitting room, that he could learn so much about Miss Fairleigh by simply strolling through his own home. Yesterday he’d learned she enjoyed reading.

Today he’d learned she enjoyed his cousin.

It seemed Geoffrey, curate or no, hadn’t quite changed his spots.

He hadn’t been spying, truly, he told himself. He’d simply strolled by the room on his way to the portrait gallery to make certain the portraits—the ones he’d been able to reacquire—were hung in their proper places. And he’d heard voices, and had peered in just as Miss Fairleigh and his cousin touched lips.

It was all he needed to see, really. It made the game a bit more complex, granted, but that only made it more interesting.

And it shed an intriguing light on his meeting with his cousin.

CHAPTER FIVE

S
YLVIE LAMOREUX-SHAUGHNESSY, ballerina, and Susannah Whitelaw, Lady Grantham, had spent their lives feeling as though they belonged both nowhere and everywhere, and as a consequence, now felt at home almost everywhere they went. Which was why Susannah, the wife of a wealthy viscount, thought nothing of perching on a chair in a dressing room sipping tea while her sister Sylvie bustled about preparing five half-dressed, giggling girls for a ballet performance at The Family Emporium. The Emporium, the brainchild of Sylvie’s impossibly handsome husband, Tom Shaughnessy, was a veritable layer cake of entertainment, featuring floor upon floor of diversions for men, women, and children, and ballet was one of them, popular primarily because the king seemed to enjoy it.

But the other reason Susannah was in the dressing room was that she and Sylvie had only just found each other. Each had grown up with a single blurred memory of being awakened in the dark, of frantic movement and weeping, of three little girls and of a woman’s soft voice. But neither of them had known what it truly meant. It was Susannah’s husband, Kit, a viscount in His Majesty’s Secret Service, who had risked his life to solve the mystery of Susannah’s birth, a journey that had taken him from London to the country town of Barnstable and then to a little, tucked-away town of Gorringe. Their family, they had learned, had been shattered when their father, a beloved politician, had been murdered and their mother, Anna Holt, was wrongly accused of the crime. Anna had been warned in time to flee for her life, but she’d been forced to leave her three very young daughters behind, and her daughters had been raised in separate families, never knowing of one another.

No one had seen Anna since.

Together Kit and Susannah had managed to gather enough clues to lead them to Sylvie, who had at the same time taken it upon herself to bolt from France in search of her past. And in searching for the truth about their lives and for each other, both Susannah and Sylvie had found love with remarkable men.

Susannah had been married to Kit in the summer, and Sylvie to Tom in the fall, and now winter was upon them.

And now, though Mr. Thaddeus Morley was on trial for treason and the murder of their father, Richard Lockwood, two people were still decidedly missing from their lives. Susannah and Sylvie wouldn’t be able to rest until they had done everything possible to find Sabrina, their other sister. They had only one very ambiguous clue: it was thought that a curate had raised her.

They would also never give up hope of finding Anna, though finding her had begun to seem impossible. They knew only that she might have gone to Italy.

“Trials can go on simply for years, Kit tells me,” Susannah told Sylvie. “Mr. Morley might literally live for years in the Tower before he swings from a rope.” She sipped at her tea, faintly pleased with herself for using such a grisly expression. Then again, Mr. Morley had made rather a habit of trying to murder members of her family, not to mention
her.
Her husband bore scars from saving her life. She thought she might be entitled to be a bit grisly.

“But they’ve evidence, you said, to convict Mr. Morley of treason and murder,” Sylvie said. She was installing Lizzie the ballerina into a clever pair of gossamer wings in preparation for the next show. She was a very busy woman, and for details of the trial she relied upon Susannah, who heard them from Kit.

“But Morley also has a very fine lawyer defending him at Westminster. He was a politician, you know, and quite well respected, so he’ll have the best defense. And though the evidence is damning, Kit says, they
will
try to save him, for that’s what lawyers do. They’re having better luck proving Mr. Morley committed treason than that he orchestrated the murder of our father and blamed our mother in the process. And they’ve found no evidence that Mr. Morley actually
paid
witnesses to point the finger of blame at Anna Holt. They’ve only the word of that horrible little man to go by. The one who tried to kill me again and again. Though you’d think that would be quite enough, wouldn’t you?” A frisson of irony from Susannah.