Page 47 of The Viscount's Promise
She sputtered on a laugh. “You are the worst sort of influence,” she scolded, “for I should not be laughing. Or complaining. I should sit meekly and take life’s problems with a smile.”
“Like a lamb,” he said, causing another bout of laughter from her.
“Do lambs smile as the wolf stalks them, then?” she queried archly.
“Of course they do.”
“And how would you know?”
“That is quite simple. I am the wolf. Though,” he said, his voice lowering, “I admit I’m sorely tempted to turn in my claws for something a bit more...domestic.”
Emily’s eyes fairly glowed as she gazed up at him. “Are you?”
“I am,” he murmured.
She smiled. It took everything in him not to drop to one knee right there and claim her hand on the spot.
Lord Randall spoke, his voice booming out with joviality over the assembled. “I thank you all for coming to my humble home,” he said, with a self-deprecating smile that fooled Malcolm not one bit.
“Pompous arse,” he said under his breath.
“Malcolm,” Emily admonished, laughter in her voice.
“Please excuse the absence of my wife. An old school friend of hers has come for a short visit. They will both be down momentarily, and then we may proceed.”
There was the buzz of polite murmurs as Lord Randall finished. The man stepped down into the waiting throng, bowing and smiling benignly on those assembled. When he came to where Malcolm stood with Emily, he stopped.
“I think, my lord, that you will be most pleased to see who we are entertaining, for you know her well.”
Malcolm frowned as the man smiled mysteriously and moved on.
“What the devil was that about?” he muttered.
“Do you have an acquaintance in common with Lord Randall, then?” Emily asked.
“No doubt, if he has spent any time in London. I know a great many people, many of them female. But I cannot think who might have gone to school with Lady Randall. With two grown sons, she must be close to fifty if she’s a day.”
“You are thinking of Lord Randall’s first wife. She died some time ago. He is remarried now. His new wife is not above seven and twenty, I would say.”
An unexplainable foreboding settled like a weight in his stomach. He had the sudden and inexplicable desire to take Emily’s hand and flee. There was no reason for such a reaction, he told himself. And yet he could not seem to shake it.
A commotion arose by the portico. With fatalistic doom, Malcolm turned.
And spied Lydia’s sweetly smiling face staring back at him.
A kick to the gut could not have knocked the air so completely from him. She looked the same as she had all those years ago when he had loved her and she had broken his heart. Her figure was tall and lithe, grace personified in the gentle arch of her spine and the long curve of her neck. Hair piled high in a golden array of ringlets he had once wanted to see tumbled down about her shoulder. Face heart-shaped, skin the palest porcelain, full lips he had kissed ardently. And those eyes. They were the clearest blue, angelically innocent.
Or so he had thought. Before she had betrayed him. A treachery made all the worse for who she had betrayed him with.
As if through a tunnel he watched as Lord Randall hurried up the front steps to his wife’s side. The party had gone silent as they stared in mild curiosity at the newcomer. All but one. Tristan was looking at Malcolm with a combination of shock and horror.
“Our guest has arrived,” Lord Randall announced, “and in grand fashion. Though she is known to at least one of you.” Here he looked at Lord Morley with a proud smile. “May I introduce Lady Morley, wife to our dear Lord Morley’s late brother.”
The group exploded into conversation. Tristan was at his side in an instant.
“Are you all right?” Tristan whispered.
Malcolm watched Lydia as she descended the front steps with Lord and Lady Randall. “Yes,” he answered curtly.
