Page 65 of Burning Secrets of a Lady's Pen
Damn his name and everyone calling it.
Corin stopped just outside of the theatre, poised halfway down the steps with his hat in his hand as a voice angrily called out his name. Accusatorily, almost.
He turned slowly, recognition dawning as the woman with the pinched face stepped out of the shadows in her lilac-covered dress.
Lilac. Why did that look so familiar?
“I was hoping to speak to you,” Miss Tuberville said peevishly.
Damn it all. As she stepped through the shadow into the light, he realized exactly why her dress had caught his attention. It was the exact same flash of fabric that he had seen fleeing the doorway as he turned from between Imelda’s thighs.
“Miss Tuberville!” Imelda’s voice rang quickly from behind them, making Corin wince as he heard the sound of her heels hurrying down the concrete steps to join them. “I was hoping to run into you this evening.”
Miss Tuberville’s eyes narrowed, her gaze shooting between the two of them with enough venom to incapacitate a person.
“I knew it,” she hissed.
“Knew what, exactly?” Corin challenged, his voice icy.
He watched Imelda put the pieces together, her eyebrows rising and a look of panic overtaking her features.
“I knew that she was a harlot,” Miss Tuberville accused angrily.
Imelda gasped, hurt flashing through her eyes, but Corin’s jaw ticked as he took a half-step to come between the two women.
“You knew no such thing,” Corin ground out. “Because she would have to be such a thing for you to be right. And she isn’t. I suggest, very strongly, Miss Tuberville, that you consider your next words wisely. I don’t know what you think you saw or what you think you know, but I do know that you are considered a dear friend of my dearest cousin. And I was under the impression, before today, that that friendship extended to Miss Merrit here. A true friend would think very carefully before making any rash decisions that could burn such bridges.”
And Corin didn’t care how true she was or wasn’t. If she so much as dared to open her mouth, to either spread a tale of what she thought she knew or slander Imelda again, he would bury her and everyone who might descend from her for decades to come.
Miss Tuberville’s eyes narrowed further, her gaze flickering between Corin and Imelda at his back. Slowly her lips curved up in a wry, serpentine smile. “How kind of you to remind me, Lord Salthouse,” she murmured, dipping her head once and hurrying past them back into the party.
Corin glared at her as she left.
At least until Imelda whispered something he didn’t catch, her chest heaving once more.
“Don’t start that,” Corin admonished, paying no heed to how publicly they stood as he turned and put his hand back to her face once more. “What did I say?”
“Corin, she means to tell everyone, don’t you see?”
Corin snorted. He didn’t. Something told him Miss Tuberville was too cunning for so obvious a play.
“Let her,” he answered calmly.
Imelda’s eyes widened, her lips parting with a ready argument, but Corin was already fishing about in his pocket.
“Let her,” he repeated, handing her the ring box. “This was my mother’s. I wanted to do this differently. I am to do this differently. But this ring box is an insurance of sorts. I’m not proposing, though if something should happen, I expect you to say that is exactly what I did.”
Imelda exhaled heavily, looking from the box in her hand to Corin as if she couldn’t decide on which question to ask first. “If something happens?” she demanded finally, her voice lifting in clear worry at the end.
“My brother has a duel in the morning,” Corin explained dryly. “I don’t want to get into all the technicalities, but I have agreed to serve as his second. After the duel is finished, after I have handled that affair I have every intention of coming to talk to you again.”
And to ask her to marry him how he had meant to from the beginning. How he should have two years before he ever departed from Florence.
“Corin, you can’t serve as his second!”
If not he, then who?
The question echoed in his head as he smiled softly, pulling his hand from Imelda’s face before he could be tempted to press their luck even further. “I have to,” he repeated firmly. “But the ring, your hand, I will be back for it.”
