Page 18 of Burning Secrets of a Lady's Pen
“Wasn’t that already the intention?” Spencer asked carefully, climbing up to take the seat across from her as the door closed.
“Yes, but now it’s personal!” Imelda snapped. “You’ll help me, won’t you, Spencer? However you can. Promise me that you will.”
Spencer’s eyebrows rose, but he smartly kept any further commentary to himself as he regarded his sister seriously. “Of course, I’ll help you, Mel. I do want a favor in return, though.”
It was Imelda’s turn to view Spencer suspiciously.
“Help make a match between Charlotte and I, Mel. You do that, and I’ll do whatever you ask of me to help you reach your dream. I’ll go to as many houses of as many lords as you need. I’ll lay whatever fortune I might be entitled to on the table. Just help me have her look at me as a possible match and help me court her.”
Well.
Imelda sat back heavily in the bench seat and blinked slowly as the scene behind her was temporarily forgotten. That was certainly not the favor she had been expecting.
Chapter 6
Despite his best intentions, his aunt wasn’t a woman to be put off. While Corin had wanted nothing more than to spend a day locked up in the solitude of his study with his books and recent publications to critique over a bottle of brandy, Lady Lydia de Trafford required else of him.
If she had just asked for his company, he might have been able to beg off, but asking for him to escort her and Charlotte to a musical was something else entirely. He could hardly allow them to attend unescorted.
“Tristan conveys his emotion with such devastating depth,” Charlotte whispered behind her fan as she leaned forward, her eyes rapt on the stage.
The stage that Corin was trying his hardest not to look at. His cousin was correct. Tristan played his part well, leaning into the female lead with such open admiration on his face that one had to wonder if the two performers weren’t more than just colleagues. That combined with the music, the Italian undertones unmistakable, hit too close to home for Corin.
It was too easy, with Imelda’s reentry into his life, for him to recall that summer in Florence with the lights so bright and similar musicals attended with another woman at his side.
Damn, but he’d tried his best not to think so much about her since she’d stormed out of his house the evening before.
“I do prefer when he’s so engaged. Finding artists, of any kind, with such depth is such a joy,” Aunt Lydia answered with an engaging smile.
Corin knew he should drop it there. She was speaking to Charlotte even, not directly to him, but that impulse that had been niggling in the back of his mind won out.
“Is that why you’ve been so interested in Miss Merrit?” he asked with a feigned nonchalance. “I didn’t know she was an author until Charlotte mentioned it.”
Charlotte, out of the corner of his eye, started. “I did?”
Aunt Lydia, for all her usual perception, seemed to brush right over it, though. She snorted, her lips curving into a pleased smile as she half-shrugged. “It is one reason,” she admitted vaguely.
“Oh, please,” Corin eyed his aunt knowingly. “I wouldn’t have put it past you to have sent for her to come to London knowing that now.”
And he wouldn’t have, but the question was more searching than anything else. He was asking for information, and he knew it. He just couldn’t stop himself from taking such a risk, as prevalent as she had been in his thoughts.
“I didn’t have to, actually.” Aunt Lydia laughed. “It was a stroke of luck, really. Her aunt is a dear friend of mine, you know. When she told me that her niece was going to be coming to visit for the Season, I was delighted only because it brought Lady Merrit such joy. After reading her work, though? You are right. I was delighted for my own selfish reasons.”
“Ah, so she’s here for the Season.” Corin didn’t know why that disgruntled him so. It was a perfectly sensible thing for her to do at her age. It was expected, even. But finding out that she’d come mainly in search of a husband…
Charlotte giggled as Aunt Lydia snorted all over again.
“She’s hardly here for that on her own account,” Aunt Lydia confided as she leaned back in her chair, idly fanning herself. “To hear her aunt tell it she’s only here to escape her father’s matchmaking attempts in the country. Ever since the loss of her mother, it seems that has been his main goal.”
Corin schooled his face into neutrality, his eyes leaving his aunt as he tried to fight the emotion that seized him.
He remembered her mother, though their acquaintance had been brief. More than that, though, he remembered how close the two of them had been and how much they had delighted in traveling together. He could only imagine the grief that losing her must have brought Imelda.
“The loss of her mother requires her to be married?” Corin asked dryly, trying not to allow the conversation to lapse long enough for his aunt to think too long on his interests.
“It is usually the mother’s job,” Aunt Lydia dismissed with a wave of her fan in his direction. “It only makes sense that her father should be more worried at having to handle such affairs himself. You know how useless men can be at such things.”
Ah, and there was the personal dig.
