Page 57 of The Pleasures of Passion
“Not unless you can tell me which of the windows in that town house belongs to Mrs. Trevor’s bedchamber. I could use a way to reach her without going through Lady Pensworth.” And he wouldn’t be averse to throwing a few pebbles at her window the next time he wanted to talk to her.
“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know which one. But I can find out.” He held up the guinea. “For another of these.”
Niall laughed. “Cheeky devil. All right then, see if you can discover it.” He held out the guinea, then drew it back when Pip reached for it. “But do it discreetly, mind? If Lady Pensworth hears about it, you’ll only make matters worse.”
Pip looked wounded. “I know how to keep quiet, sir. I do work for Lord Fulkham, after all.”
“Good point.” And that gave him an idea. “Here’s your guinea, and there’ll be another if you find out what your master has learned fromDebrett’sabout a man named Sir Kenneth Whiting and bring the information to me at the Star and Garter at ten.”
“Very good, sir. It will be done.”
“That’s all then. Thank you.”
The boy walked off.
It would be good to go into this game fully armed with information. Because if Sir Kennethwasrelated to Joseph Whiting . . .
He’d cross that bridge when he came to it.
Brilliana should have known that the moment she walked out of the garden, her aunt would be waiting.
“My footman informed me that you went out to meet someone while I was napping, but that other young fellow wouldn’t say whom.” Disapproval laced Aunt Agatha’s tone as she walked alongside Brilliana. “So, who was it?”
“You do realize I’m a grown woman and not some chit out of the schoolroom,” Brilliana said irritably. “I can meet with whomever I please. For goodness’ sake, I’m engaged—”
“Which is precisely why you should not be dallying with Lord Fulkham.”
She blinked. “Lord Fulkham? What would make you think—”
“My servant said he recognized the footboy’s livery as that of Lord Fulkham.”
Brilliana couldn’t help it—after everything that had transpired earlier, the fact that Niall had gone so far as to use the baron’s servant in order to allay her own suspicions started her laughing.
“I don’t find it remotely amusing, my dear.” Aunt Agatha narrowed her gaze. “You’re not playing the two men off each other, are you?”
That only made Brilliana laugh harder. As Aunt Agatha began to scowl, Brilliana fought to restrain her laughter. “N-no,” she choked out. “Not in . . . the least, believe me.” She could barely handle the one tiger she had by the tail, let alone two of them.
“Then what did Fulkham want?”
Oh, Lord, what to say? Perhaps a version of the truth? “For one thing, it wasn’t Lord Fulkham. It was Niall. My fiancé and I argued this afternoon, and he knew I wouldn’t admit him. So he got Lord Fulkham to write me a note requesting a private meeting in the park, and Niall had it delivered by the man’s servant to further my assumption that I was meeting with Lord Fulkham.”
“Yes, but why did you even go? Didn’t you stop to question why Lord Fulkham would want to meet with you in private instead of simply calling on you like a respectable gentleman?”
Drat it—she couldn’t tell Aunt Agatha the real reason Baron Fulkham might have for wishing a private meeting. “Lord Fulkham said he didn’t want the neighbors speculating about why he was calling on me when I was newly engaged.”
“And you believed that havey-cavey story.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” To keep from having to look Aunt Agatha in the eye while she spun her tale of half-truths, she headed up the steps. “I figured the man was overly cautious. Heisa member of the government, you know.”
“Hmm.” Aunt Agatha followed, keeping pace with Brilliana quite easily for a woman of advanced years. “So what did Lord Margrave want?”
“To apologize, of course.”
“That certainly took a while,” her aunt said dryly.
Brilliana nearly missed a step. “What do you mean?”
“The footman said you’d been out there in the garden a half hour or more.”
