A Notorious Countess Confesses (PG7) (32 page)

The white muslin dress she’d chosen featured puffed sleeves, a generous but not tartish expanse of bosom, and a single flounce. Her gold cross dangled just above the shadow of it. The fire had been built up high to accommodate the sheerness of her gown, and though she might pass once or twice before it—she wore only the one petticoat, and the line of her body would be a delicious, tantalizing hint.

She inspected the room one final time, trying to see it through Freddy’s jaded London eyes. It was spotless, gleaming—the maid had seen to that.

But for some reason she hadn’t let them take away the wildflowers drooping in the vase on the mantel. The ones Adam had brought to her the first time he’d visited. They seemed like a talisman.

Freddy was announced at half past twelve, and he swept in, bringing London with him from the top of his sleekly groomed hair to his ruthlessly barbered chin to the flawless toes of his boots. His coat was the color of chocolate, which did splendid things for his eyes, and the buttons appeared to be silver and stamped with his family crest. It occurred to her that she hadn’t seen anyone so scrupulously groomed in a while. He seemed a bit out of context in this room, but he was so sure of himself, so certain of his welcome everywhere he went, that he transferred something of his own ease to her.

“Freddy. You’re looking dashing.”

She held out her hands to him, and he seized them and brought them one at a time to his mouth to kiss lingeringly in a very French way that would have alarmed everyone else in Pennyroyal Green.

“Alas, I know ‘dashing’ is the compliment you bring out when you’re feeling noncommittal, my dear.”

“I notice you haven’t produced a compliment of your own, and you’ve already been here for two minutes.”

“Well, then …” He stood back and studied her suspiciously. “I scarcely recognize you without your fashionable London pallor. The country has put roses in your cheeks. Or is that rouge? What’s the occasion? My visit? I’m flattered.”

She knew, by the way he faltered a little that he was not unmoved by the white muslin and the bosom display and by everything else about her he’d once claimed he needed to sample lest he die unfulfilled. But that was the way Freddy talked. All hyperbole interspersed with innuendo punctuated by wry moments of awareness.

“If my cheeks are rosy, I fear it’s from the unbearable excitement of coming down the stairs and ordering the servants about in preparation for your visit. There’s really naught else to do in Pennyroyal Green. Apart from healthful walking.”

He snorted. “If God had meant us to walk, he wouldn’t have made me rich enough to buy a barouche and the cattle to pull it.” He lowered himself into the nearest Chippendale chair. Stiffly—the motion was in fact perilously close to a topple—and she reminded herself that they were all getting older, and Frederick’s one abiding love was excess. She examined him, too: he’d thickened a bit in the few months since she’d seen him. The elegant lines of his face had blurred, his body was softer. His buttons didn’t strain at all across his waistcoat, however. Oh, no: Frederick could afford a tailor to adjust his clothing to the minutest changes in measurement, and he would tolerate nothing ill-fitting.

“I must warn you, there’s very little else to do here in Pennyroyal Green that doesn’t involve walking. Naught that you would consider entertainment.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say there was naught to do. I might enjoy a hand of cards this evening, for instance, particularly if an interesting wager is involved.”

Freddy never leered. He simply fixed her with his admittedly fine dark eyes and his eyebrows, as lively as spaniels, gave an upward twitch.

“I’ve grown fond of Faro,” she said cagily. “The popping sound of the box interrupts the eternal silence of the country.”

He gave a short laugh and nodded, as if acknowledging a dodge and a parry. “Perhaps a game later, then. We can discuss the stakes.”

“Perhaps.” The smile she gave him promised both everything and nothing, which, she could tell, charmed him fully. He liked everything to be a sport, Freddy did. He wanted to stalk and toy, just like an overfed, bored house cat.

“Silence you say, hmmm? Do I detect dissatisfaction with your new circumstances, Eve?”

“You detect flippancy.” She wouldn’t like Frederick to think she could be easily had or that she was desperate for escape. “I’m quite comfortable, all in all, and the villagers haven’t yet stoned me for a harlot. There’s the title, you see, mine until Monty’s heir marries. And they’re quite afraid of Henny.”

She saw no need to mention the revived scandal.

And she glanced at the wilting wildflowers and felt like a traitor.

Frederick stretched out his legs, booted in Hoby and polished to such mirrorlike brilliance, she surreptitiously tucked her skirts more snugly about her ankles lest he use them to get a peek up them. He patted his palms on the arms of the chair absently and gazed about the room, his strong Gallic nose turning this way and that like a weather vane, taking in everything—the unadorned mantel, the wilting wildflowers in the vase, the portrait of she-hadn’t-the-faintest-idea-who but was likely related to the earl, the admittedly fine but a haphazard selection of furniture, much of it French, as if the earl had kept the best of his revolutionary plunder for London and stuffed the rest into this house.

“So! This is what remains of your meteoric good fortune, eh, m’dear? This … dear little manor? ”

She saw the glint in his eye. She knew he was watching her carefully and weighing his loyalty to her versus the deliciousness of describing her new and considerably humbler circumstances to the broadsheets and the rest of the ton’s vultures. He had said they were growing bored.

“It is dear, isn’t it”?” she agreed blandly. “Will you have a drink, Freddy?”

“I’ll have many drinks if the evening progresses as I hope. I’ll begin with a sherry, if you have it. Are you certain you wouldn’t rather come over here and have a seat on my knee?”

“The settee will do for now, thank you. Though it’s tempting, given that your knee is bit more padded than last we met.”

He was amused and unperturbed. “I eat when I’m sad and lonely, dear Evie.”

“You’ll be happy to know I’m serving dinner fit for a tragedy. Your favorite, lamb with mint.”

“Perhaps I’ll achieve ecstasy before dinner and be unable to eat a bite.”

She gave him another small, enigmatic smile. But a wayward surge of impatience clenched her teeth. She recalled another man threading his hands up through her hair and taking her mouth with his, without question or preamble or innuendo or bargaining.

“Eve, do you recall the evening of the opera—Le Mistral, I believe it was? With Signora Licari?”

“I do.” After the opera—during which a young man had toppled out of the balcony into the pit when he was craning to see the dress she’d been sewn into—she had gone on with the Earl of Wareham and Lord Lisle and the friends to a decadent party. She’d perched on Frederick’s knee while he’d casually wagered sums that made the other players’ foreheads bead in sweat. She hadn’t even sipped at the seemingly endless rivers of champagne. She’d been intoxicated by the risk and the power and the endless wealth. Evie Duggan from the slums could have had her pick of the men present; there was always a part of her that remained watchful, observant.

Last night was in fact the first time she could remember losing herself entirely.

“I remember thinking your arse felt tight as a new plum perched there, Evie,” he said mistily.

“Oh, Freddy, such a beautiful sentiment. What woman doesn’t want to be remembered for her arse?”

To his credit, he laughed.

“Ah, forgive me, Evie. Now you can see how your absence has affected me. I’ve lost the ability to woo graciously. Perhaps we can go for one of those … what did you call them? … ‘walks’—and get reacquainted properly.”

“If you like. I’ll just see if I can fashion a walking stick for you so you can manage it.”

“I’ll walk behind you and enjoy that view, which will be incentive enough to remain upright.”

She couldn’t help it. She did laugh, and the laugh evolved into a sigh. There was comfort in familiarity; she knew how to talk to him. She fell into the familiar rhythms of flirtation and innuendo the way she would the lines of a play or the steps involved in the Sir Roger de Coverley.

“Shall I tell you about the other parts of you I enjoy?”

“Perhaps when we’ve run out of other conversation. Do know when to lay a joke to rest, Freddy. I find originality erotic.”

The footman arrived with sherry, and she was absurdly pleased to note Freddy inspecting the livery, his eyes registering approval. If she’d married Freddy, she wouldn’t look at the poor footman and the livery and calculate how much he cost her every time he appeared in the room

He raised his glass to her. “Do you miss him? Monty?”

“Yes. Rather,” she said truthfully.

“As do I. But time and tide stops for no man or woman.”

He said this meaningfully.

The footman returned in the room, hovered in the doorway.

“My lady, the vicar is here to see you.”

“The vicar?” Freddy said on an amused hush. “Have you found religion, my dear? I didn’t think things were as bad all that. Or have you been very bad, and he’s come to chastise you?”

Another bloody innuendo. Eve would have delightedly taken it up if she hadn’t been frozen in shock.

She could hardly send Adam away.

And God help her; despite how awkward it would be, she wanted to see him. She wanted to see his eyes when he saw her again this morning. He hadn’t been thrilled about Haynesworth.

She doubted he would cheer at the sight of Freddy.

“Of course. Send him in.

In a moment, his tall frame filled the doorway.

Oh, dear Lord. He was carrying a bunch of wildflowers.

And all was silence.

Frederick’s swift expert glance took Adam in from his head to his feet: noted in all likelihood every pore of his face, the lean height, the dusty boots. His gaze slid to the wildflowers wilting on the mantel.

And then back to the ones Adam was holding.

He turned a malevolently amused gaze on Evie. “I thought you said you’d been bored here in the country, my dear.”

Eve suspected her color was something approaching the white of her dress, judging from how icy her hands had gone. But she managed a steady voice when she said, “How lovely to see you, Reverend Sylvaine. Allow me to introduce my friend, Frederick Elgar, Viscount Lisle.”

“How do you do, Lord Lisle?” His voice was as lovely as ever. As steady as hers.

He hadn’t yet looked her in the eye yet, of course.

“How do you do, Reverend Sylvaine? Or should I say, who do you—”

“Are you here to see Henny, Vicar?” Evie interjected, with a brightness that sounded tinsel false to her own ears. “So kind of you.”

Adam at last turned toward her. And here his composure faltered. And his eyes flared with a heat she felt in her very veins: She saw in them the carnal knowledge of her, the possession, the want.

But then he gave her a faint, hard, ironic smile. Imposing distance.

He was deciding, she thought, that he’d been an utter fool. And that everyone had been right about her except him.

She could feel it, the distance, like a door slamming shut.

“Yes. I thought the flowers might cheer her,” he said to her, and no would ever have guessed she’d muffled her first-ever screamed release into his smooth throat the night before, and that he’d tenderly tucked her hair behind her ear.

“Are we discussing the same Henny? Can she be cheered?” Frederick wondered.

Adam said nothing at all. He was watching Frederick with a faintly pleasant, detached expression. But there was a fixed brilliance in his eyes that unnervingly reminded Eve of the time she’d watched a cat peruse a rat it had just killed, deciding where it should take its first bite.

“Henny’s been ill.” Evie’s voice seemed to hear her own voice from a peculiar distance. She tried a smile, and all the muscles of her face protested against doing something it clearly felt was unnatural under the circumstances. She finally did manage to get the corners up. “The vicar has been a great comfort to her. She’s still doing marvelously well, Vicar. Marvelously. But I believe she’s sleeping. But sleeping well.”

And now she was babbling.

“Well, then! We’re having an early supper. Perhaps you’d like to join us for it, Reverend Sylvaine?” Lord Lisle nearly purred it.

She didn’t dare look at Frederick. The only look she was capable of giving him would kill him, of that she was certain. Then again, the ton already had just the perfect nickname at the ready.

Adam transferred his gaze to Frederick. His face registered only a sort of mild, pleasant curiosity. As if Freddy were an unusual species of mushroom he’d stumbled across in the forest. Evie thought, not for the first time, that he likely didn’t give any visible warning at all before he threw a fist into someone’s jaw.

And then he smiled, slowly, the sort of slow smile that boded no good at all.

“Thank you for your invitation, Lord Lisle. I think I will.”

She wondered if she could find a moment to ask the housekeeper not to set the table with knives.

Chapter 23

SO THIS WAS Lord Frederick Lisle, the man who had lost the right to marry her in a card game. She hadn’t mentioned she was expecting a visitor.

Then again, the night before had featured very little conversation.

Plates of steaming food were placed in front of each of them by the silent housekeeper. The chandelier overhead, Adam noticed, dripped with crystals pointed as fangs. Reflected in the silverware, in the candelabra.

“How did you come to know my dear friend Lady Wareham, Reverend Sylvaine?”

Dear friend, was it?

“She fell asleep during one of my sermons. It was rather unforgettable.” He smiled politely.

Evie’s dress and the color of her complexion remained a startling unison of white. She stared at her lamb chop as if she didn’t know quite the way into it. She hadn’t yet picked up a utensil.