Chapter 3 #2
A moment of dead silence ensued during which she wondered absurdly if he’d heard her.
But excellent hearing was apparently another of his qualities.
He shoved away from the desk and straightened to his full intimidating height.
“Those are indeed the facts. For the most part.” He paused, his gaze examining her with uncanny precision, as if to discover her weaknesses.
“You did make one subjective statement: that she’s ‘obviously enamored of me.’ What led you to that conclusion? ”
“I spoke to her in person.” Though that was stretching the truth a bit.
“In person?” An undercurrent of anger surfaced briefly in his voice before he mastered himself. “And Miss Greenaway told you she was enamored of me?”
A hot flush stole over her cheeks. “Well, not exactly ... I-I mean ...” For a moment, the mad impulse to lie seized her.
But she had the oddest feeling that he’d know if she did.
“To be honest, she wouldn’t speak of you at all.
She confirmed her name and that the house belonged to you, nothing more.
” She’d only said that much because Felicity had flustered her by taking her by surprise in the street outside the house.
But the moment Felicity had raised the subject of his lordship, the woman had blushed and fled back into her sanctuary.
Surely that sufficiently proved the woman’s status.
“How did you conclude she was ‘enamored’ of me?”
Her blush told me so, she thought. But he wouldn’t take that as proof. “She was very secretive. She clearly wanted to protect you from—”
“Nosy gossips?” His voice rumbled with sarcasm. “I can’t imagine why she’d want to do that.”
She glared at him. “If her connection to you is innocent, then why should she hide anything?”
“Because she prefers her privacy perhaps?”
“Or because she feared your disapproval. You must admit you’re known for your discretion, for not telling anyone, even your closest friends, about your activities.”
Rubbing his chin, he circled her. “I suppose you’re referring to all the rumors about what I did while I was abroad.”
“Well ... yes.”
Thanks to his notorious reticence, discovering anything about him but rumor had been nigh on impossible.
The few facts were that he’d disappeared from England at the age of nineteen, and he’d returned after the death of his father a few years ago.
No one knew where he’d gone or what he’d done.
Tales had ranged wildly from assertions that he’d been a spy for the French and the lover of a Spanish don’s wife to one man’s claim that he’d seen Lord St. Clair begging in the streets of Paris.
The point was, the viscount was more secretive than a priest hearing confession. And Felicity disapproved of secrets.
Amusement flickered in the gaze that locked with hers. “Which rumors have you heard? That I was a paid assassin? That I seduced Josephine after her divorce, and Napoleon called me out for it?”
She pricked up her ears. “Not that last one.” Good Lord, that would be quite a tale for the column. If she could coax him into confirming it, which wasn’t likely.
“And I suppose you believed every rumor.”
“Hardly. But in the absence of other information—like the sort you yourself might provide—what else would you have me do?”
He halted in front of her. “You might mind your own business instead of sowing rumor and gossip in your wake.”
“I do not sow rumor and gossip!”
“Ah, yes, I forgot. You make speculations based on fact.”
“I do what any good member of the press does,” she said loftily.
He snorted. “The good ones write responsibly. They concern themselves with matters of national importance. I hardly think Miss Greenaway qualifies as that.” When she started to retort, he held up his hand.
“So you saw the woman, found out I provide her with shelter, and determined that she was my mistress, is that it?”
“It was a logical deduction.”
“But wrong.”
They were back to that again, were they? “If indeed I’ve mistaken the situation, I’ll happily write a correction. So far you’ve told me nothing to prove me wrong.”
“And you have failed to explain why you’re so interested in my personal affairs.
” Strolling back to the desk where her papers were scattered willy-nilly over the scarred oak surface, the man actually had the effrontery to sort through her notes.
“Tell me, what possible reason could you have for writing about me? Have I unwittingly offended you?”
She chose to ignore his obnoxious implication that revenge motivated her columns. “I write about everyone, Lord St. Clair. Your story is merely one among hundreds.”
“But a mundane one.” He picked up an envelope, scanned it, then set it down. “A man provides a house for a woman to whom he’s not married. Surely that’s boring fare for your readers. Men do it all the time.”
His indifference roused her moral indignation. “That’s precisely why it’s offensive! Men seek out virgins to marry and want their wives to be faithful to them, yet they feel perfectly free to cavort with as many women as they can lay their hands on!”
He paused in rifling her desk to cast her a calculating glance. “You forget that I’m not married.”
“No, but you’re about to be.”
She regretted her retort the moment he froze. It suddenly occurred to her that he’d been fishing for just such a revealing statement, and she’d foolishly taken the bait.
He ambled toward her with deceptively easy steps, like the unhooded falcon taking flight. “What do you mean?”
“N-Nothing. Only that you’re a bachelor and ... you’ll marry some day and—”
Without warning, the falcon loomed over her. “You know of my offer to Miss Hastings, don’t you?”
She swallowed, then nodded.
“I suppose you discovered that the same way you discover everything else—by delving into people’s private business.”
“No!” His insistence on seeing her as a sneak grated on her. “Lady Hastings told me. Katherine is a friend of mine.” A very dear friend, sweet and loyal, though timid as a mouse. That was the trouble. Katherine didn’t have the first idea how to deal with the likes of Lord St. Clair.
“I see.” His jaw tightened. “So you decided to expose my ‘misbehavior’ in the paper to make your ‘friend’ doubt me and refuse my suit.”
He was very nearly right, though Felicity had really hoped to prod Katherine’s parents into doubting him.
Poor Katherine had refused to break off with the viscount if it meant making her parents—especially her mother—angry.
She’d even confided wistfully to Felicity that if Lady Hastings could only be made to realize how unsuitable Lord St. Clair was, there might be some hope of refusing his suit.
Felicity had advised the young woman to oppose her mother, but Katherine didn’t have it in her.
Even so, Felicity mightn’t have interfered if she hadn’t learned that the man had both a mysterious, worrisome past and a mistress.
The thought of her dear friend married to such a man chilled her blood.
Felicity had met too many of Papa’s “fashionable” companions not to know what miserable husbands they made.
Renewed in the rightness of her position, she met his gaze boldly. “I thought Katherine—and her parents—should know what she’s getting herself into.”
Eyes cool as black marble stared her down. “And you couldn’t tell them in private because then you’d have to reveal your nasty hobby of meddling in others’ affairs.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. She’d had about enough of this overbearing viscount and his insults. “See here, Lord St. Clair, I’m not the one who’s keeping a mistress while he woos a nice young gentlewo—”
“For the last time, Miss Greenaway is not my mistress.”
“And I suppose that the baby she had with her, the son who was easily less than a year old, isn’t yours either.”
That stopped him cold. His expression grew shuttered, then thoughtful. “Well, well. So you know about the baby, too. And I can see what you deduced from that.”
“Do you deny it?”
“Would it do me any good? You have your mind made up that I’m a debaucher of innocent young women and a willing sire of bastards. I wouldn’t want to destroy your skewed assessment of me by providing you with something so useless as the facts.”
She bristled at this insult to her integrity. “If you can prove my deductions faulty, by all means do so.”
“All right.” Abruptly he began pacing the study from corner to corner, examining its contents as if taking inventory. He opened the silver snuff box that sat on the edge of a delicate table. “Do you take snuff, Miss Taylor?” he asked, as if it were the most natural question in the world.
“Of course not! That was Papa’s.”
“So this study belonged to him.”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. And the dress sword hanging on the wall? That was his, too?”
Where was this leading? “No, it was my grandfather’s.”
He peered closely at it. “Ah, yes, Colonel Ansel Taylor. The boys in the regiment often spoke of Ansel the Anvil, who had a spine of iron.”
“In the regiment? What were you doing in a regiment?”
A little twist of a smile touched his lips. “I fought in the Peninsular Wars.”
She regarded him disbelievingly. The very idea was ludicrous.
Men with titles and fortune, men who were their fathers’ only heirs, didn’t serve in the military.
If they were killed, it would mean an end to the family line and the title.
No father would allow it. No heir would suggest it.
Everyone knew the military was for younger sons and lower gentry.
“That’s what you were doing on the Continent all those years?
” she asked, not bothering to hide her skepticism.
“Why? Do you wish to print my war history in your paper, too?”
His wary expression only heightened her suspicions. “Can you give a reason I should not print it?”
“I fear you’d claim I fought for the other side,” he said with acid condescension.
She glowered at him. “I don’t invent information, my lord. I merely report it.”
“Or ‘speculate’ on it.”