Sylvia smiled at him, but could not help wondering if poor Mr. Connan would ever outgrow his annoying habit of belittling himself and his chosen profession. She knew George Connan to be Oxford educated, with a quite astonishing understanding of art and literature.
“You are too modest, Mr. Connan. Your little shop, as you choose to call it, is better stocked than some of London’s better establishments,” Sylvia responded, intending to bolster the man’s confidence.
Her good intentions were wasted, however, for the book merchant’s face turned fiery red and his reply was lost in a morass of unintelligible gibberish.
“I trust you have received my supplies,” she interrupted, taking pity on his confusion. “I am quite out of canvas, and that naughty Rufus chewed up two of my favorite brushes last week. He is quite in my black book, 1 can tell you.”
Connan cleared his throat. “Oh, yes, indeed, my lady,” he said, his aplomb partially restored. “Everything arrived as you instructed, my lady. And Mrs. Radcliffe’s latest novel is just in.” He paused, and when he continued, his voice had dropped to a plaintive whisper. “Every time a Minerva Press book arrives, I cannot help but remember what pleasure our poor countess derived from those romantical novels she used to order from me.”
“I enjoy a good novel myself occasionally,” Sylvia cut in brac- ingly, hoping to avoid the long enumeration of the late countess’s many saintly virtues she had heard countless times before.
Mr. Connan appeared not to have heard her. His eyes had taken on that familiar glazed look—very much like those of a dead jellyfish, Sylvia thought—and focused on a fantasy he seemed to be able to conjure up at will. She had always considered it a crying shame that an intelligent gentleman like George Connan should fall into a catatonic trance at the mere mention of a slip of a girl whose sole purpose in life—or so her aunt had declared in no uncertain terms—was to entangle as many unsuspecting gentlemen as possible in her web of seductive games, wring them dry of emotion, then discard them like so many soiled handkerchiefs.
“And now that heartless rogue is back,” Connan muttered, as though speaking his thoughts aloud, “and we must defer to him as lord of the manor while we all know that he drove the poor angel to take her own life.”
Sylvia was startled at this novel revelation. “We do?” she repeated. “I beg to differ, Mr. Connan. I know no such thing. The countess’s death was declared an accident, and I am disappointed to hear an intelligent man like yourself give credence to ignorant gossip. The theory of suicide is plainly ridiculous. No young woman of eighteen with everything to live for would commit such a sinful act. There was no evidence at all to support that theory.”
Connan appeared slightly taken aback at the fierceness of Sylvia’s rebuttal. “There was the suicide note,” he argued. “The poor lady—”
“Did you read that note?” Sylvia snapped.
“No, of course not,” the scholar replied stubbornly. “His lord- ship made quite sure of that.”
“Then it is nonsensical to pretend that it was a suicide note,” Sylvia insisted, her patience with this romantical faradiddle fast evaporating. She had never seen the timid, self-effacing George Connan express himself quite so forcefully before. His reticence seemed to disappear in the face of an attack on his precious countess.
“You do not know the whole, my lady,” Connan countered in less strident tones. “You see, her ladyship confided in me.” He glanced uneasily over his shoulder as though he feared being caught divulging a treasonous secret. “Marriage to Longueville was destroying the poor darling. A creature of such exquisite sensibility was understandably outraged at the disgusting appetites his lordship displayed in the intimacy of their life together.” Connan’s expression contracted into a grimace of distaste.
“Disgusting appetites?” Sylvia repeated, more intrigued than she cared to admit about the earl’s secret perversions. “Exactly what disgusting appetites are we talking about here, Mr. Connan?”
Connan turned a bright red and stuttered for several moments without being able to articulate coherently. “I c-cannot sully your t-tender ears, my lady,” he finally muttered, his eyes modestly averted.
“Her ladyship evidently sullied yours with her lurid tales,”
Sylvia responded sharply. “None of which I believe for a moment, of course. No gentlewoman would dream of broaching such a subject to a stranger.”
Connan’s eyes refocused on her face. “Oh, you do not understand,” he cried, and Sylvia was horrified to note how close the bookseller was to actual tears. “We were not strangers at all.”
Sylvia did not quite know how to take this odd confession, and her expression must have reflected her thoughts, for Connan hastily added, “And it was not what you are thinking, my lady,” he stammered, face again flaming a brilliant red. “She called me her soul mate.” His voice dropped an octave. “The only man who appreciated the purity of her soul, she used to say.”
“Poppycock!” Sylvia snapped back, thoroughly disgusted at this maudlin display of excessive sensibility. “Can you explain to me why the lady happened to wed an earl when you were her soul mate? Or did this so-called confession come after she was safely hitched to Longueville?”
Connan’s face had turned a pasty white. “We did not meet until after the wedding,” he muttered. “But her ladyship assured me that had we done so, her choice would have been quite different. As it was, her father pressured her into what he felt was an advantageous match for the daughter of a penniless French emigre.”
And the countess’s father was undoubtedly correct, Sylvia mused, but she refrained from pointing out that obvious fact to the distraught gentleman. Already she regretted the harshness of her interrogation. Connan had revealed a new slant to the young bride’s character, one that confirmed Lady Marguerite’s description of the countess as a shameless flirt who amused herself tormenting a guileless young man in the throes of puppy love.
She sighed and glanced at the table of new arrivals at the front of the shop. Perhaps if she were to read more of those infamous ro- mantical novels, she might learn the countess’s secret of stirring such unswerving devotion in the hearts of men.
She might also discover exactly what disgusting appetites the lady had objected to in the privacy of her marriage bed.
Lost in these titillating thoughts, Sylvia was brought up short at the sight of the man standing just inside the door. His granite-dark eyes seemed to bore into her very bones.
How much had the Earl of Longueville overheard, she wondered, conscious of the guilty flush suffusing her cheeks.
* * *
Nicholas heard the raised female voice before he opened the door, but he hesitated a mere second before stepping into the shop. If George Connan wished to argue with his customers, that was his concern, but Nicholas had an errand to perform for the dowager, and he intended to discharge it.
The identity of the angry customer stopped the earl in his tracks, and he paused for a long moment to survey the scene. The force of Lady Sylvia’s disdain lent a militant glitter to her marvelous gray eyes, and Nicholas was enchanted by the wisps of red curls escaping from beneath her gray straw bonnet with its profusion of pale pink roses.
This pleasant reverie was abruptly cut short as the tail end of Connan’s last remarks penetrated the earl’s consciousness. He stiffened and the half smile that had played around his mouth vanished. What had Connan said about the daughter of a penniless French emigre? This could only be Angelica. The meddling dolt was gossiping about his wife again, Nicholas thought savagely. And to Lady Sylvia no less.
For some inexplicable reason Nicholas did not want the rumors of Angelica’s wanton behavior to reach Sylvia’s ears. But of course it was already too late for that, he reminded himself morosely. The entire neighborhood was undoubtedly privy to every flirtatious sally the countess had ever uttered, and to many that she had not. And to all those illicit assignations Matthew had hinted at before he left Longueville ten years ago.
>
The notion of cuckoldry had always seemed to describe the woes afflicting other men, and Nicholas had simply refused to believe his cousin’s mocking accusations. The idea that a newly married husband could possible be crowned with horns was unthinkable.
The ugly question he had refused to answer all those years ago rose again with renewed persistence. Was it possible that his bride’s perverse enjoyment of sexual violence had not been limited to the conjugal bed?
Had the trusting, bewitched Earl of Longueville been cuckolded by an enchanting chit of seventeen whose violet eyes had held promises he had believed implicitly?
Connan’s voice jerked the earl out of his unpleasant reverie, saving him the pain of facing the truth.
“My lord,” the bookseller exclaimed, moving towards the new arrival with an ingratiating smile on his pale face, “welcome to my humble shop. What may I do for you?”
Nicholas stared at the younger man for several moments, his memory dredging up the past with agonizing detail. Had his mother not protested that Angelica flattered Connan excessively and hung on his every word until the young scholar had become unbearably pedantic? Nicholas had chosen to believe that his wife was merely amusing herself at Connan’s expense, encouraging him to make a cake of himself. Now he wondered whether Angelica had not employed less innocent means of tormenting her bedazzled admirer.
“I am here to pick up her ladyship’s new books from London,” the earl said shortly.
He turned his gaze on Lady Sylvia, who had recovered her composure. On impulse Nicholas stepped closer and raised her gloved fingers to a half inch from his lips. He did not release her hand immediately, but stood gazing down into the cool gray depths of her fine eyes. He was oddly gratified to see pink rise again to her cheeks. At least the lady was not immune to his attentions.
He smiled. Here lay the cure to his restlessness, he thought com- plaisantly. If the lady was willing, of course. And why should she not be? The Earl of Longueville was a very wealthy man, and he would be generous if she pleased him. He had no doubts on that score. Nicholas allowed his gaze to drift down to the lady’s mouth, well shaped and rosy as though she had already been soundly kissed.
Her color deepened, and Nicholas felt his irritation at Connan’s impertinence fade. His smile threatened to become a grin as his thoughts anticipated the delights in store for him. Lady Sylvia was indeed a tempting morsel, although she appeared to be unaware of her obvious attractions. She blushed like a veritable innocent.
The incongruity of the notion amused him. Innocence in such a female was all an act, of course. There was no doubt that the lady was as ruined as her aunt and eminently suitable for the kind of liaison Nicholas had in mind.
Chapter Eight
The Missing Figure
Sylvia stood as though mesmerized, conscious only of the gleam of approval in the gentleman’s dark eyes, and the warmth of his grasp seeping through the thin cotton of her gray gloves. She experienced the insane desire to remain in his hands forever.
A discreet cough from Mr. Connan jerked her back to her senses. Sylvia felt the uncomfortable warmth of yet another blush on her cheeks. She was behaving quite like a besotted schoolroom chit in the presence of a dashing music master. This would not do at all, she told herself firmly. Had she not sworn never to allow another gentleman to beguile her with charm, sweet blandishments, and the magic of unspoken promises in deceitful eyes?
What was the matter with her? she wondered, turning to accept the packet of books and brushes Connan had prepared for her. After ten years of learning the unwritten boundaries of what a woman with her shameful history could and could not do in the eyes of the country gentry, Sylvia had become careless. Most of them stood in awe of her aunt, the flamboyant Lady Marguerite, and her refusal to be treated as a pariah. As a wealthy, titled landowner and direct descendent of the eccentric but well-loved Lady Giselda, her ladyship had been insulated from open snubs, and Sylvia had benefited from her aunt’s position in the neighborhood.
It had taken but one disdainful glance from the Dowager Countess’s cold eyes, however, to remind Sylvia of her precarious position in local circles. Her aunt’s long-standing friendship with the dowager was no assurance that Sylvia herself would be accepted
within the august circles over which that cold-eyed dragon held sway.
And now her son was exercising the same prerogatives. She had seen it in his knowing eyes, in the way he smiled at her quite as though ... as though . . . Sylvia balked at completing that unnerving thought.
“Thank you, Mr. Connan,” she murmured, aware that the earl had not moved from her side. “I shall send the trap to pick up the canvas tomorrow. I doubt Greyboy will take kindly to having it tied to the saddle.”
“I will send one of the clerks to fetch your horse from the blacksmith’s,” Connan said solicitously.
“That is very kind of—”
“That will not be necessary.”
Startled at the earl’s audacity, Sylvia turned to glare at him.
He smiled, and Sylvia was reminded forcibly of her aunt’s big gray tabby, whom she had seen only yesterday indulging in his favorite sport. Lounging in the shade of a lilac bush, Jonas had one enormous paw on the belly of a tiny field mouse, which he periodically removed to nudge the victim into action. Sylvia had silently urged the mouse to make a run for it, but the poor creature was obviously so paralyzed with fear that it could only crouch before the green-eyed monster that would eventually destroy it.
She felt a strong bond of sympathy for that doomed mouse as she listened, unprotesting, as die earl spoke.
“I will be happy to take the lady up in my curricle as far as the smithy’s.” Anticipating her assent, the earl took the packet from Mr. Connan and offered his arm.
To her immense chagrin, Sylvia found herself quite incapable of shaking off years of ingrained civility. Her fingers reached out, seemingly of their own accord, and settled lightly on the earl’s arm. In no time at all she was whisked outside and lifted effortlessly into the vehicle standing in the sunlit road. She felt the curricle dip as the earl joined her on the green leather seat, and then they were off, a liveried groom leaving his post at the horses’ heads and swinging agilely into place behind them.
Sylvia could have kicked herself. What had become of her fine resolution to send every eligible gentleman to the right about? And more particularly those who were ineligible, like Baron Hazel- worth and Sir Geoffrey Huntington, both married with growing families. Of course, the baron was now a widower, but Sylvia was not foolish enough to believe that his intentions were any more honorable than they had been before Lady Hazelworth’s death. Lawrence Hazelworth was not looking for a second mother for his brood. At least not at Whitecliffs, Sylvia reminded herself bluntly.
The curricle swayed on the uneven cobbles, and Sylvia grasped the handrail to steady herself. It had been a long time since she had driven in such an elegant rig. Both Huntington and Hazelworth owned these sporting vehicles, but Sylvia had wisely fobbed off all invitations to drive out with either gentleman. Why was it, she mused crossly, that she had been more than able to divert these gentlemen from their designs on her virtue, but she had suddenly lost the use of her tongue when confronted by Longueville’s autocratic invitation, which had sounded more like a command?
She glanced over her shoulder and was surprised to see George Connan standing before the door to his shop staring after them. Had Sylvia not known the bookseller to be a self-effacing, kindly, unassuming scholar, she might have described his present expression as lowering, perhaps even malignant. She dismissed this odd impression as a result of her present agitation and cast her gaze down the village street, counting the moments that brought her closer to Mr. Gordon’s forge and her means of escape from the predatory man who held her captive.
“Ah, there he is,” Sylvia exclaimed, brightening at the prospect of regaining control of her transportation. And indeed, his dappled coat gleaming in the sunlight, Greyboy stoo
d, head nodding sleepily, exactly where she had left him an hour since.
“If I remember anything at all about Gordon, my dear,” the earl drawled in an amused tone that set Sylvia’s teeth on edge, “it must be his cavalier disregard for the clock. So I would not wager on getting your horse anytime before tea-time.”
“Mr. Gordon distinctly said twelve o’clock,” Sylvia insisted.
“Did he, now?” There was a world of skepticism in his voice that caused Sylvia to bristle.
“Actually, he said ‘in a jiffy,’ which I took to mean right away,” she clarified, remembering that the blacksmith had not mentioned any precise hour.
“Aha! I take it you have no experience with a Comish ‘jiffy’?”
Sylvia suspected the earl was laughing at her, which did not improve her temper. “Indeed I have,” she responded coldly. “I have lived with my aunt for ten years now. I should know something about local dialect.”
“So you should,” he acknowledged smoothly. “We shall soon discover how attentive a pupil you have been, my dear. Gordon,” he called out. “Come out here, man.”
The pounding of iron against iron that resounded throughout the yard broke off abruptly, and a giant of a man emerged into the sunlight, blinking like a huge owl. His thickly muscled arms glistened with sweat, and a grimy shirt clung wetly to his broad back.
“Milord,” he exclaimed, one hand instinctively tugging on his forelock, his bearded face breaking into a grin. “What ken I do for yer lordship this fine morning?”
“It is long past morning, Mr. Gordon,” Sylvia interrupted pointedly. “And I have come for my horse, which you promised to have ready by noon. Remember?”
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