Her Secret Affair (7 page)

Isabel and Mobrey had left the ballroom; that much Kern determined after making a circuit of the huge chamber, exchanging greetings with a number of acquaintances and dodging several others who were known to be long-winded. He strode into the corridor and scanned the people there. Two middle-aged women glided up the stairs to the ladies’ retiring room. In the dining room across the passageway, servants were laying out a midnight supper. He peered over the balustrade and spied a few late arrivals in the foyer below. Others went in and out of the lower reception rooms. Had Isabel maneuvered Mobrey into a dark corner somewhere?

His steps quick with tension, Kern descended to the ground floor, glanced into the library where his political cronies gathered amid the pleasant odor of cheroots, and then proceeded to the drawing room. The furniture had been moved aside so that small tables could be set up for card playing. A number of games already were in progress, with gentlemen and a few ladies who preferred not to dance.

Then he saw her.

At the far end of the room, dark as sin against the pure white marble mantelpiece, stood Isabel Darling. Charles Mobrey was making an ass of himself, bowing as he seated her and then scrambling to fetch her a drink. Another man unknown to Kern already occupied the table. Stout and bewhiskered with a scar bisecting his cheek, he had a gouty leg propped up on a stool.

Kern should have been pleased to see Isabel engaged in so public a pursuit as card playing. But her attention was focused on the stranger, and her too-charming smile made Kern mistrust her motives.

He negotiated the maze of tables. “Ah, Miss Darling,” he said. “I hope you need a fourth?”

Isabel looked up sharply, a scowl flitting over her gypsy features. Either she disliked the sight of him or she was up to no good. Both, he decided. Then her lips quirked into a polite smile and he knew she was about to refuse him, so he pulled out a chair and sat down.

At that moment, Charles Mobrey returned with two glasses of champagne, one of which he handed to Isabel. “Kern, old boy. Never knew you to be one for gaming.”

“Surprise,” said Kern. “I found myself at loose ends when my dance partner vanished.”

Isabel’s cheeks took on a pink flush. “Fancy that, a lady daring to spurn you. I’m sure if you return to the ballroom, my lord, you’ll find dozens of others who would be happy to fill her place.”

“Is she not kindness personified?” Mobrey asked of no one in particular. His lapdog eyes softened on her. “‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty.’”

Isabel lowered her lashes. “Sir, you are too flattering.”

“‘Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold,’” Kern countered.

“Then make haste and depart lest you be tempted into thievery,” Isabel countered with a sly curve of her lips. “I’m certain we can find a more experienced gentleman to complete our foursome.”

Her smile stung his loins. He imagined her in bed with a gossamer gown draping her curves and her unbound hair flowing across the pillows. He despised this effect she had on him. Though unlike other men, he could control his base instincts.

“Now, now, my impish Queen of Hearts,” Mobrey said. “Lord Kern might be a newcomer to the tables, but he’ll even the odds in our little game of whist. Kern, if I may present your partner, Sir John Trimble?”

Kern nodded to the man sitting opposite him. Trimble’s nose was large and misshapen like that of a pugilist’s. A thick scar ran across his cheek, and bushy brows squatted above his beady eyes. His lips slit the weathered wrinkles of his face. “’Tis a pleasure,” he grunted. “Though you might not care to join our game. You see, I lack the funds to play deep.”

“Fine,” Kern said. “We’ll play for the satisfaction of winning.”

Trimble shuffled the deck, his stubby fingers deft. Isabel studied him covertly, intently, and Kern couldn’t fathom her interest in Trimble. By his own admission, he lacked riches. Unless …

No. He couldn’t have been one of her mother’s lovers. Aurora Darling had chosen her men based on their wealth and rank. She wouldn’t have bothered with a lesser being like Sir John Trimble.

Kern abandoned the speculation. Isabel’s true interest lay in Mobrey. The card room gave her a better chance to work her strumpet’s wiles on him than the ballroom, where convention permitted her only two dances with the same partner.

Trimble dealt the cards, and Kern studied his hand. He knew the rudiments of the game from his days at school, back in that brief time when he’d thought if only he embraced sin he might win his father’s approval …

He locked the door on those dark memories. They meant nothing now, nothing but a hard lesson learned at the expense of his integrity.

“Diamonds are trump for this hand,” Mobrey told Isabel, tapping the card lying in the center of the table. “That means the diamond suit takes precedence over the others.”

“I know a little of the game,” she said, lifting her white shoulders in a shrug. “Enough to muddle my way through.”

Indeed, she played adroitly, though Kern sensed a certain distractedness in her. He felt the brush of her skirt beneath the table as she tapped her toes on the floor. She made several blunders, losing the game for her and Mobrey. When, at the end of an hour, they had won only two hands, she lay down her cards with a regretful smile. “Thank heavens we didn’t play for money,” she said. “I would have beggared myself—and my long-suffering partner.”

Mobrey reached across the table and patted her hand. “Jolly good show, Miss Darcy. With you as my partner I am always the winner.”

“It takes time to learn the fine points,” added Sir John. “I myself have played for some thirty or more years.”

She leaned toward him, her breasts straining against her bodice. “Then perhaps you would be so kind as to teach me those fine points?”

Clearly puzzled over the attention of a beautiful young lady, he studied her, his bristly brows drawn together. He couldn’t know, as Kern did, that Isabel Darling liked to bewitch every man she met.

“Why, that would be an honor … Miss Darcy,” Trimble said gallantly. “However, I’m leaving tomorrow to visit a friend in the country for a week or two. Perhaps when I return?”

She pursed her lips. “That will be fine.”

“Your cousin will be wondering at your absence,” Kern said. “We should return to the ballroom.”

Rising, he offered his arm to her. She hesitated, glancing at Trimble one last time before accepting Kern’s aid. Her hand felt small yet firm in his, capable rather than fragile. He wondered how many men those fingers had caressed, what liberties she used to arouse them, how long she teased them before lifting her skirts …

Tortured by dark fantasy, he realized Mobrey knelt on one knee before her, gazing up at her in adoration. “May I call on you, Miss Darcy?”

She smiled. “Certainly you may—”

“Another time,” Kern snapped. With a tug on her arm, he pulled her out of the drawing room.

Her warm smile chilled to a frosty glare. “Is it quite necessary to behave like a cretin?”

“It is when you behave like a courtesan,” he said in a low voice.

“I’ve done nothing unladylike.”

“You make a conquest of every man you encounter.”

“Oh? Have I made a conquest of you, then?”

She was laughing at him.
Laughing.
As they started up the grand staircase, he caught her womanly scent, a light perfume of roses with a hint of dark musk. He wondered if her skin tasted so delicious. He muttered for her ears alone, “This is no matter for jesting. I will personally see to it that you do not bring shame upon Hathaway or his family.”

Isabel returned his challenging stare. “Is that a threat, my lord?”

“It’s a promise. You see, I intend to foil your plan to trap some wealthy fool into matrimony.”

Her dark eyelashes fluttered downward, hiding her thoughts. “If you say so, my lord.”

Damn her artfulness! Why did he sense she hid secrets behind that fine-boned face, secrets he could not fathom? She hid nothing. Her purpose was easy to read and as old as time. She was a fortune hunter who wanted to snare a rich man as her husband. She aspired to join a rank far above the one earned by her disreputable life. And she didn’t care who she manipulated or who she hurt.

Drawing her into a deserted alcove, he seized hold of her chin, bringing it up and forcing her to look at him. Her skin felt warm and soft, made to tempt a man. “Be forewarned, Miss Darling. Should you lure some unsuspecting gentleman into an indiscretion, I’ll be there to stop you. A few choice words, and he’ll see you for what you really are: a whore, a smut peddler, and a blackmailing bitch.”

Music lilted from the ballroom. His denunciation hung in the air as if to mock the merry tune. Isabel Darling stood motionless, her brown eyes wide and steady, her lips tight and bloodless. His arrow had struck its mark. Yet he felt no triumph, only an uneasiness akin to shame. For all that he knew he was right about her, a part of him wanted to reach out and stroke her cheek, to kiss the softness back into that sulky mouth.

Without uttering a word, she brushed past him and glided toward the ballroom, leaving her scent to haunt him. Somehow, the dignity of her bearing made him feel less of a man.

And he was hard-pressed to remember why he hated her.

One of the first lessons a courtesan learns is to endure the disdain of Society. This Truth came clear to me early in my career.

While I was trying on a hat at a milliner’s on Bond Street, Mr. Terrence D—— entered the shop. Having enjoyed his company only the previous week, I smiled and started to walk toward him. He turned away and spoke to the shopkeeper, who then approached me, snatching the hat from my head and shooing me out the door.

I departed in a fury for home. How dare one of my customers set himself so far above me! I was still in a distraught state when Sir John T—— came to call, my face stained with tears of rage. He held me in his arms, making no carnal demands and showing me the tender regard of a friend. Without a word for his own needs, he listened to me rail against those who scorned me.

Yet no man and woman can lie close without the rise of certain yearnings. And so, after my tears were spent, I invited him on a glorious trip to Elysium. His gentle touch made me feel like a goddess created for his adoration.

Those who think him ugly have not looked deeply into his soul; they do not see how perfectly he understands a woman’s heart. Alas, his penury forced him to marry well, yet I take comfort from the fact that he loved me first. He is a man of honor who will be greatly distressed for me to reveal our private affairs. But I cannot record in these pages the story of my life without saying that Sir John T—— is the only man I can truly trust. He alone knows my secrets. He alone knows the heart-breaking truth about my child.

The truth I will take with me to my grave.

—The True Confessions of a Ladybird

Chapter 4

“It’s high time you returned,” Callie called out. Her mantle flapping like crimson wings, she swooped through the large, shadowy bedchamber at Hathaway House.

Isabel closed the door. The pleasant haze of weariness from her first ball vanished as she took a sharper look at Callie. Brassy blond hair tumbled around her shoulders. Mud spattered the hem of her gaudy yellow gown. Her bosom nearly overflowed her scandalous décolletage.

“You’re dressed like a gentleman’s fancy piece,” Isabel chided. “Why are you not wearing your servant’s garb? Don’t tell me you’ve gone out.”

Callie caressed the shapely curve of her hips. “And so what if I have? It isn’t fair that
you
make merry at a party, while
I
molder here all alone.”

“You’re supposed to be posing as my maid. That is what we agreed upon.”

“Only because I want to help you find out who killed Aurora.” Callie reached out and fingered Isabel’s green silk skirt. “But maybe you’ve told a Banbury tale. Maybe what you’re really planning is to land yourself a rich, respectable husband.”

Isabel peeled off her kid gloves. That was the same accusation Lord Kern had flung at her only hours ago. “I told you, Mama wrote in her memoirs about her fear of poisoning. I’d let you read so for yourself, but…”

“But I don’t read so good,” Callie finished with a shrug. “Still, from what you said, Aurora didn’t give any real proof.”

“Several of Mama’s former lovers visited her in the weeks before she died. There was ample opportunity for one of them to administer arsenic in something she ate or drank. Aunt Minnie saw a man going into her bedchamber the night before she took ill.”

“She did?” Callie blinked in surprise. “But he was likely a customer.”

Isabel gave an impatient shake of her head. “Mama’s symptoms fit poisoning—even the doctor I consulted said it was probable.”

“Hmmm. Her symptoms also fit a terrible case of the ague.” Callie blew out a sad sigh. “Whatever it was, the poor soul did suffer. I was there—I saw her.”

Isabel remembered, too. She remembered her feeling of helplessness as her mother wasted away to wraithlike frailty. The doctor had been unable to ease her suffering, to restore the vitality that had once made Aurora Darling the most dazzlingly beautiful woman of the
demimonde.

Her throat taut, Isabel walked to the fireplace. Red coals glowed on the grate, though the flames had died. Despite the scoffing of those around her, she would never let the fire of her conviction go out.
Never.

At tonight’s ball, she had begun her battle for justice. She had secured an introduction to Sir John Trimble. The encounter had left her shaken, uncertain. She’d wanted to be consumed by contempt for him. She’d wanted to hate him for ignoring her all these years. She’d wanted to look into his eyes and see the cold cruelty of a killer.

But instead he had treated her with politeness, even kindness. And she felt an aching emptiness, a yearning she despised. She reminded herself that she had no more reason to suspect him of murder than any of the other men in her mother’s life.

Was
he her father? The memoirs had been coy on the matter, forcing Isabel to read between the lines. In several entries, Aurora had referred to Isabel’s father as Apollo. Yet oddly, Sir John Trimble was the only one of her mother’s lovers who had
not
been assigned a god’s name. He was the only man who had truly loved Aurora Darling. He was the only man who knew her mother’s secrets.