Page 53 of Courting Scandal With The Duke
Her aunt cast the embroidery aside. ‘Where did you meet him? What did he say?’
‘Um… He walked me home from Green Park.’
Her aunt’s eyes grew round. ‘How very kind of him.’
‘Supremely.’
‘Did you tell him about Miss Simon’s illness?’
‘He already knew. Her mother wrote to him before she left London.’
‘Oh.’ Lenore picked up the fabric she’d been working on and put it down again. ‘Was he terribly upset?’
‘Not particularly. He did send her flowers, I gather.’
‘Oh.’
‘What are you thinking, Aunt?’
‘It occurs to me that some men do not like a woman who is ill all the time.’
‘Are you saying I should use the opportunity to engage his attention?’
‘Well, when you put it like that, you make it sound rather scheming, which I cannot like, but something of the sort.’ She patted at her perfectly coifed hair. ‘I heard from your father this morning.’She was trying to sound casual and failing. ‘He will be with us in two weeks’ time.’
Two weeks? That was not a great deal of time in which to get herself banished from Society. ‘I wonder why he did not write to me?’
‘He said he was in a hurry, on urgent business, but would write more later.’
He was always on urgent business, and Barbara wasn’t going to hold her breath waiting for a letter that would never come.
‘I shall look forward to it. By the way, the Count of Lipsweiger and Upsal will probably call on us later today. I wish to speak with him.’
Her aunt gave her a sharp look. ‘There is something I do not like about that young gentleman.’
‘Really?’
‘There is something calculating in his eyes.’
Her aunt was such a bad judge of character. She thought the cold-hearted Duke was wonderful and took exception to a man who had always been kind to Barbara. ‘Nonsense. He is a good friend as well as my brother-in-law, and I hope you will treat him as such.’
‘I am not so rag-mannered as to treat him any other way, my dear.’ She popped to her feet. ‘I shall ring for tea and you will tell me all about your conversation with Derbridge.’
Not a chance. Or about her plans for the cold-hearted Duke.
A scandalous liaison revealed at some important public event, preferably with a member of the royal familypresent, the recently married Princess Charlotte for example, would suit her purposes very nicely.
Or since the newlyweds were rarely in town, perhaps an event attended by the Prince Regent. There was bound to be something on the royal calendar.
Xavier strolled around the vacant cottage. It had been rented out furnished to his last tenant and, as he had expected, everything was in order. It could be rented out again immediately.
Hopefully the next tenant would be as satisfactory as the last.
Normally his man of business would have inspected the place before advertising it for lease, but Xavier had decided to visit it on the way to the Anderson event, since the cottage lay nearby their house.
When he’d checked his diary, it was clear he had not accepted the Anderson’s invitation, but in the absence of his secretary, nor had he declined.
While they would not be expecting him, he doubted they would turn him away even though he knew them only vaguely. As he recalled, they fancied themselves to be intellectuals, friends to artists and so forth. Their circle consisted of a lot of painters, sculptors, writers of bad poetry and the like. People whose morals, in his view, left much to be desired, if only half of the rumours about them were true.
