Nicola Cornick Collection: The Last Rake In London / Notorious / Desired. Nicola Cornick

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ with a curt bow he walked away.

      Jack let out the breath that he realised he had been holding for the whole encounter.

      ‘Damn it, he was in earnest,’ Stephen said, staring after Holt, his glass of Tokay suspended halfway to his lips.

      ‘In deadly earnest,’ Jack agreed. He realised that Gregory Holt must have been in love with Sally for a very long time. He wondered why she had turned him down. Holt was rich, titled, the perfect catch for a good-time girl on the make. Even if she had run off with him and had to weather the scandal of divorce, they could have been married by now.

      Jack was accustomed in business to weighing evidence, making quick decisions, trusting his own judgement. He looked at Gregory Holt’s ramrod-straight back and furious demeanour and wondered what it was about Sally Bowes that seemed to command the loyalty of all the people whose lives she touched. It did not square with the evidence that he had uncovered about her. Perhaps it was time to confront her.

      ‘Come on,’ he said, knocking back the rest of his Tokay in one gulp, ‘it’s time to join the ladies. I want to talk to Sally.’

      ‘Wait a moment, old chap!’ Stephen protested. ‘It’s only ten minutes since dinner! They won’t want to see you yet. And that’s no way to treat my best wine—’

      But it was too late. Jack had gone.

      ‘So, my dear,’ Lady Ottoline said to Sally, patting the seat beside her, ‘come and sit with me.’ She gestured to the deck of cards on the table. ‘Do you play?’

      ‘A little,’ Sally said, thinking ruefully of the gaming tables at the Blue Parrot. She wondered how Dan was getting on in her absence. She trusted him completely, but with the opening of the Crimson Salon a mere few days away she was extremely nervous.

      ‘Then perhaps we may have a game of bezique later,’ Lady Ottoline said. ‘But first I want to talk about you—and about Jack. He tells me that you met at the Wallace Collection.’

      ‘Indeed we did,’ Sally said, wondering how much truth and how many lies Jack had mixed together to describe their relationship.

      ‘Well, at least you must be a cultured gel,’ Lady Ottoline said. ‘Buffy, the current Duke, is an utter philistine, but Jack has the making of a good custodian of the Kestrel collection as long as his cousin don’t sell it off before Jack inherits.’

      ‘The Duke has no children of his own?’ Sally said.

      ‘No.’ Lady Ottoline gave her a sharp look. ‘Buffy don’t like the girls. Robert, Jack’s father, is heir to the dukedom of Kestrel and Jack after him.’

      ‘I see,’ Sally said, thinking that Jack Kestrel really was a great catch for any woman prepared to put up with his vile temper and inability to love her.

      ‘I hope,’ Lady Ottoline said disagreeably, ‘that you are not going to pretend you did not know you had caught the heir to a dukedom?’

      ‘I do not really care,’ Sally said, with extreme frankness. ‘When I choose to wed, Lady Ottoline, it is the man that matters to me, not his title or his money.’

      Lady Ottoline’s plucked brows shot up towards her diamond headdress. ‘Well, upon my word!’

      ‘Having been married once before,’ Sally continued, ‘I have to be extremely careful in my next choice.’ Suddenly she felt reckless. If she could shock Lady Ottoline into repudiating her, it would serve Jack right for his machinations. ‘I do not wish to make as ghastly a mistake second time around as I did the first time,’ she said. ‘So the selection of a new husband is of paramount importance to me. He must have integrity and wit and be faithful, honourable and never, ever bore me. That is all I ask.’

      There was a long silence. Sally selected a bonbon from the dish on the table in front of her and popped it into her mouth, before daring to steal a look under her lashes at Lady Ottoline. Her ladyship was regarding her with a very shrewd expression in her dark eyes.

      ‘I see,’ Lady Ottoline said. She frowned slightly. ‘Your name is familiar to me, Miss Bowes. Now, why would that be?’

      Sally glanced at Jack across the room. He and Stephen had rejoined the ladies a scandalously short ten minutes after dinner was finished, having certainly not had time to consume a leisurely glass of port or luxuriate in a cigar, but when he had shown every sign of wanting to speak with her, Lady Ottoline had told him curtly to take himself off.

      ‘I wish to talk to your fiancée, Jack,’ she had said imperiously. ‘You may speak to her later.’

      And so Jack had been obliged to make small talk with the other guests, but Sally was very conscious of his gaze resting on her from time to time, dark and serious but without the edge of anger that she had become accustomed to seeing there since their terrible confrontation that morning.

      ‘Miss Bowes?’ Lady Ottoline’s tone was sharp, but with a betraying edge of indulgence. ‘It is all very well to stare at one’s own fiancé, but I would like an answer as well, if you please.’

      ‘I beg your pardon, my lady,’ Sally said, hastily dragging her gaze away from Jack. ‘Perhaps you recognise my name because you have heard that I own the Blue Parrot, which is a nightclub on the Strand in London?’

      There was another silence whilst she waited for Lady Ottoline to explode with shock. Surely, this time, she had overstepped the mark. No respectable great-aunt could contemplate such an alliance for her nephew. But Lady Ottoline was made of sterner stuff. She pursed her lips and shook her head. There was a steely light in her eye now as though she had realised just what Sally was about and was determined to thwart her.

      ‘No, that wasn’t it,’ she said. Her dark eyes brightened. ‘Do you, though? How marvellous to own a nightclub! You must tell me all about it, Miss Bowes. I do admire a gel with a bit of spirit, having been one myself.’

      ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ Sally said, realising she had underestimated the opposition. ‘I am sure that you were.’

      ‘You were married to Jonathan Hayward, were you not?’ Lady Ottoline said abruptly. ‘He was a dreadful cad, a total rotter. My late brother always said that it made him feel quite nauseous to think of him.’

      Sally laughed. She was starting to like Lady Ottoline rather a lot. ‘Thank you, my lady. He had much the same effect on me.’

      ‘We have much in common,’ Lady Ottoline said drily. ‘I suppose Jack thought I’d cut up rough if I knew all about your history?’ Her eyes gleamed with suppressed amusement. ‘Silly boy, just because I never married he must think I am as cosseted as a baby!’

      ‘I imagine he might have been a little wary of telling you,’ Sally said, smiling. She was enjoying this conversation a lot now. ‘After all, owning a nightclub is scarcely respectable, and nor is potential divorce.’

      ‘Well, who cares a fig about that?’ Lady Ottoline demanded. ‘Sometimes it is more fun to be scandalous. I remember my mama telling me that being respectable all the time was a dashed dull deal. She worked as a spy for the British government, you know, and eloped with her husband. She was quite a woman.’

      ‘I saw her picture at the Collection,’ Sally said. ‘She was stunningly beautiful.’ She СКАЧАТЬ