Silk And Seduction Bundle 2. Louise Allen

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СКАЧАТЬ entered the house, he closed the front door behind her and led her into a small parlour, in which a fire crackled cheerfully in the grate.

      ‘I shall go and tell Stephen Sahib that you are here,’ he said before melting away.

      Midge made straight for the fire and sat on the chair closest to it, toeing off her sodden shoes. When she had put the dainty satin slippers on the day before, she had assumed she would only be sitting on a sofa all day, or at most, going down the stairs to dine. She had not thought she would tramp through woodland, take a coach to London, and then spend hours walking the streets. The soles had worn through hours ago. And then it had come on to rain, and she had not known whether it was worse to have shoes full of holes, or no coat or bonnet to keep out the wet. She felt, and was sure she looked like, a half-drowned rat, with her hair plastered all round her face and down her neck. She was surprised the servant had let her in. None of the houses she had ever visited before employed servants who would have shown in a woman in her condition without question, and sat them down in front of a fire.

      She heard the door to the hall open again, and when she looked round, Stephen stood in the doorway, jacketless, his waistcoat still unbuttoned. He had brushed his long hair neatly back off his face. And removed his earring. And the quality of the evening garments was so fine, the style of what he was wearing so conventional that all in all, she decided, once he had donned a jacket, he would not look out of place at Almack’s.

      ‘What is it now?’ he demanded brusquely as he stalked across the room towards her. ‘What do you want?’

      ‘I—’ she swallowed nervously, and got shakily to her feet ‘—I am sorry to be so bothersome, but I need a place to stay for the night. Nick said…Nick said…’ As her mind went back over the painful interview she had just had with her stepbrother, the room seemed to tilt around her. Just as the floor began to swim upwards towards her face, she felt Stephen’s strong arms catch her, and she found herself lying, not face down on the hearthrug, but rather more decorously, upon a sofa.

      She rather thought she must have fainted completely for a few seconds, because Stephen was pressing a drink into her hands, and she had no recollection of him going to fetch it.

      ‘When did you last eat?’ he demanded, his brows drawn into a scowl so tight she imagined he could very easily give himself a headache, without having to drink a single drop of brandy.

      ‘This morning. At the inn,’ she confessed. Stephen had been insistent that they breakfast before setting out. And although the last thing she had felt like doing was eating a mouthful, so anxious was she that word of her whereabouts might already have got back to Shevington Court, and someone would come to haul her back in disgrace, she had remembered how effectively Pansy’s remedy for nausea had worked the day before. That plate of toast had kept her stomach calm all the way to London.

      ‘You are wet through,’ he said. ‘What has happened to you? Why are you not with this other so-called brother of yours?’

      ‘Well,’ she sighed, ‘he did not think it would be at all proper to have a married woman staying in his lodgings. Especially one who looked like she had been dragged through a hedge backwards.’ She pushed a hank of wet hair off her face, and took a hefty swig of her brandy as her mind went back over that painful scene.

      ‘I do not begin to understand what you thought you might accomplish by coming here,’ Nick had said icily.

      When she had began to stammer that it was because of the letter he had sent, he had pokered up, and stated, ‘Germanicus is dead. There is nothing you can do about it. And if you think I am going to let a woman looking like that—’ he had scathingly eyed her dishevelled appearance ‘—into my rooms then you are very much mistaken. I have prospects now, you know, Imogen. And I am not going to put my future at risk by letting you drag me into whatever scandal you are brewing. Now, I suggest you take yourself off back to your marital home, where you belong, and stop behaving like some kind of tragedy queen. I shall call on you there, at a more conventional hour.’

      ‘You will do no such thing!’ she had shouted at him, furious with herself for persistently refusing to admit how exactly like Hugh his middle son was. Totally self-centred and cold-hearted. All Hugh had cared about was books. And all Nick cared about was his career.

      And she would rather die than go crawling to Monty’s house in Hanover Square! She had immediately discounted any thoughts of returning to her aunt and uncle, too. Though her aunt might be sympathetic to her plight, her uncle was bound to be furious with her for coming up to London on an impulse, and alone.

      ‘I shall go and stay with my true brother,’ she had spat at Nick. Well, he had been upset that she had not intended to in the first place, hadn’t he?

      ‘Yes, that’s right, the one who is half Gypsy. But let me tell you this,’ she had said, jabbing Nick in his bony chest with her forefinger. ‘He is twice the man you are. Ten times!’

      Nick’s thin lips had twisted into a sneer. ‘The way you look I am sure you will fit right in with his camp on Hampstead Heath, or wherever they happen to be.’

      ‘He,’ she had boasted, ‘has a very large house on Bloomsbury Square, as it happens.’ And with her nose in the air, she had turned and clattered down the dingy communal staircase of the cheap lodging house where Nick had rooms.

      It was not until she had got into the street that she remembered she had no purse. She would have done anything rather than go back into Nick’s rooms and beg for the means to procure a cab. Besides, it was not that far. The coach Stephen had hired had not taken a quarter of an hour to take her to Nick’s lodgings.

      And so, in high dudgeon, she had set out to walk to Bloomsbury Square.

      But those dratted indoor shoes! Ruefully, she rubbed at her wet and blistered feet. She had been limping before she had reached the first corner.

      Stephen’s gaze followed her movements. When he saw the state of her feet, he drew in a breath.

      ‘I have to go out soon. It cannot be avoided. But Aktash will see to all your needs,’ he said, crossing to the bell pull and tugging on it. ‘You shall have shelter for the night. You stayed with me all night. You did your best to look after me. Now I do the same for you. And we are even,’ he said fiercely. ‘In the morning, we will discuss what your next move should be.’

      Midge almost burst into tears again. She was safe, for now. But, oh, the problems she was going to have to face in the morning! Why, oh, why could she never think before charging off on one of her wild exploits? No wonder Monty was sick and tired of her. She was sick and tired of herself.

      ‘What do you mean, she has disappeared?’

      Monty glowered at his father, completely at a loss to understand how Midge could have vanished from a house that was teeming with so many servants.

      ‘Somebody must have some idea where she is!’

      Pansy, who had been summoned the moment Monty arrived at Shevington Court, wrung her hands. ‘It wasn’t till this morning, when I saw her bed had not been slept in, I got worried. Well, you know her routine. I only go up to her room now if she summons me special, excepting to take her breakfast up and help her dress for the day.’

      Cobbett cleared his throat. ‘I believe I was the last person to see her, my lord,’ he admitted guiltily. ‘When I took up her post.’

      Monty drew in a deep breath, stifling the urge to hit СКАЧАТЬ