Breaking the Rake's Rules. Bronwyn Scott

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       Chapter Six

      One certainly needed their wits about them to keep up with the Selbys, or even just to be up with them. Bryn had awakened to the surprise—and not the good sort of surprise either—of finding James and his mother at the breakfast table. Breakfast had become a time of day reserved just for she and her father, a time to talk plans. Having the Selbys present felt like an intrusion into intimate territory.

      But there they were, with plates filled full of eggs and sausage and more than enough talk to go around. James and his mother leapt from topic to topic with lightning speed in an attempt, no doubt, to show off their conversational acuity. But it was bloody difficult to follow, with an unladylike emphasis on the ‘bloody’. It was a dizzying array of subjects, really, ranging from butterflies to weather to books and back again to butterflies. The book had been about butterflies so perhaps they’d never truly left the topic.

      ‘Butterflies are a rarity in Barbados, which makes studying them a challenge. It has something to do with our position in the Atlantic that I don’t pretend to understand.’ James waved a fork in the air to punctuate his point. ‘But it does make their presence here special. The Mimic is one of my favourites. It looks like a Monarch, but it’s the story behind it that makes it so extraordinary. Scholars believe it came from Africa and was brought over on the slave ships or perhaps it was blown here on the currents of a storm.’

      Not unlike many of the people who’d sought the sanctuary of the island, Bryn thought. Certainly there was the literal application of the idea. The recent abolition of slavery meant that many of the freedmen had come here as slaves. There was a figurative application, too. People like she and her father, people looking for a fresh chance, blown here metaphorically on the winds of their personal storms. Men, perhaps, like Kitt Sherard.

      ‘I’ve just recently been able to add an Orion to my collection,’ James told the table at large. ‘An Orion is grey and blends in terrifically with things like old leaves, which makes catching one difficult.’

      For an instant, the image of a butterfly garden filled Bryn’s mind. It was the first interesting thing James Selby had said. She was rather surprised he had such a garden. She wouldn’t have guessed it of him. A butterfly garden would be so bright and colourful, a perfect tropical accessory. She could imagine all the little butterflies gaily fluttering around.

      Selby’s next words shattered the image. ‘I finally caught one up near Mont Michael a few weeks ago. I took it home and pinned it in the centre of my display case, I’m that proud of it.’

      Pinned. Trapped. Dead. Bryn discreetly lowered her fork of eggs and opted for a sip of tea instead. Her vision had been a moment’s fancy. She silently chastised herself. James Selby didn’t have a butterfly garden, it had been silly to think so. Lepidopterists pinned things. It was what they did. It was what men like Selby did. He wasn’t a cruel man, merely young and shallow. He’d probably not even thought to consider what his actions would mean to the butterfly even though they’d impact the butterfly considerably more than they’d ever impact Selby.

      She’d met men like Selby before. They were thick on the ground in London’s ballrooms. Selby would waltz through life never considering the impact he would have on others. He was an earl’s grandson. He didn’t have to. No one would expect it of him, not even his wife, who would only be a butterfly of a different sort to Selby; something to pin to his arm, to display in his home, another decoration along the same lines as his fine taste in carpets.

      She must have had a distasteful look on her face. When she looked down the length of the table, her father gave her an inquisitive arch of his eyebrow. She immediately pasted on a smile and received one from him in return. In fact, his was positively beaming. Uh-oh. She didn’t like that smile. She scaled back hers to something more aloof and polite.

      She had to be careful here. She didn’t want to foster false hopes and she knew exactly what was afoot: a match and one, that on paper, would be regarded as perfect in every way. Selby was young, in his mid-twenties, not unattractive in a well-kept sort of way, someone who with the right guidance could be moulded into a successful gentleman. She’d seen his file before they’d left England. She’d seen all of the investors’ files. She’d spent the voyage studying each of the recommended investors and there’d been countless letters and communications between them and her father even before that. When she’d met Selby it wasn’t as if she was meeting a stranger. In many ways she’d known him months before the actual meeting.

      He was the grandson of an earl with a small inheritance of his own from his father. He was in the Caribbean managing the family’s sugar interests, cutting his teeth before taking over properties in England that would come to him upon his thirtieth birthday. His prospects were not much different than those of a second son and entirely respectable. His situation and expectations were very much akin to hers.

      Oh, yes, she knew precisely where this was going and why. She wasn’t the only one who’d made promises to her mother. Her father had made them, too. But she’d also made a vow to herself, one that would inevitably collide with her father’s plans. She only hoped when it did that her father would concede. He’d always been the permissive parent, growing up. He’d been the one who allowed her to ride astride, to swim in the swimming hole, to spend the afternoons hunting with Robin Downing, the squire’s son, although he probably shouldn’t have.

      Selby kept talking. It was easy to smile when she thought of those afternoons with Robin. They’d both been reckless sorts—it was what had made them such good friends. As they’d grown up, though, that recklessness had transformed from dares over climbing trees to something wilder, more dangerous. More than one kiss had been stolen on those adolescent hunting trips. Perhaps there had even been a time when she’d fancied marrying Robin, but a squire’s son wasn’t an adequate match for the Earl of Creighton’s niece and her mother knew it. Young Robin turned twenty-one and found himself off on a Grand Tour. Then her mother had taken ill and her little family was off on a tour of their own, albeit less grand, from spa to spa searching for a cure that didn’t exist.

      Now she and her father were here. This was to be a new beginning for them both. Bryn was honest enough to admit she didn’t know what she wanted from that new start, but she did know what she didn’t want and that was a copy of London only with different scenery. She could not be James Selby’s latest butterfly, no matter what promises had been made.

      ‘I think Selby’s plantation opportunity sounds like the perfect investment.’ Her father’s words drew her back into the conversation with an alarming jolt, the words ‘Selby’ and ‘opportunity’ reminding her rather poignantly of Kitt Sherard’s comment in the garden. Selby wouldn’t know an opportunity if it jumped up and bit him in the arse. Now here were those same two words again in a different, even СКАЧАТЬ