His stomach sank. It was, then, as his friends had feared.
“Furthermore, Lord St. John, what gives you leave to come here to discuss anything going on in my household?”
That grounded him, as the lady brought him back to the purpose of his being here: Lord Scarsdale. Though, if he were being even a little bit honest with himself, his pressing need for a bride and heir was not a very small part of today’s boldness. “I am coming to you from a meeting I just left with a close friend . . . a gentleman who has suffered a broken heart because of you.”
Her lips lifted at the corners in a smile that so perfectly melded sarcasm and sadness. “I’m not the one known for breaking hearts.”
And yet . . . that wasn’t altogether true. Not really.
She, of course, spoke of Norfolk.
The husband who’d been unfaithful to her . . . who’d planned to leave her. It was too much, the memory of that day.
He turned the newspaper around. “Given the details here pertaining to Lord Scarsdale and Miss Gately, and”—he spoke over her interruption—“my meeting with the gentleman a short while ago, it speaks of a different story.”
Sylvia’s perfectly too-full lips formed a firm line. She reluctantly reached for the copy he extended her way, wafting the sweetest, summery fragrance of lilac and rose water that put a man in mind of a field of flowers and—
Good God, focus, man.
The lady’s eyes moved quickly over the page, skimming the details there. When she’d finished, she set it down on the table between them with a decisive thwack. “Hmph.”
Hmph?
He waited for her to say something . . . anything other than that. She, the same woman who’d regaled him with story after story, chattering all night as card partners, should now find herself ever so inarticulate and silent? “That is all?” he pressed when it became abundantly clear she’d no intention of saying anything further.
“What else is there to say? If Lord Scarsdale has suffered a broken heart, then perhaps you should look elsewhere to discover the reason for the earl’s suffering, say . . . the gentleman himself? He has no one but himself to blame for either his actions or current state of affairs”—her acerbic warning threw cold water upon the haze momentarily cast by her alluring fragrance—“and certainly blame doesn’t belong here, in my household.”
Sitting up straighter in a bid to put some space between them, he tried again. “Lord Scarsdale’s betrothed has recently become a patron.”
“I don’t have patrons, Lord St. John.”
“A member, then,” he continued. “And at these meetings, she—”
The lady exploded to her feet. “She what? Had a sudden realization that mayhap the gentleman’s feelings were not as deep as she’d hoped or wished, and she would vastly prefer a different life, even if it is one without him in it?” Sylvia’s chest moved fast, rising and falling hard. Her cheeks washed red, a flush extending down over that creamy expanse, and all words failed him.
Well, words, they generally did fail him.
But not like this.
Not with him noticing the last woman he should be noticing. And with her standing as she was, and him seated as he was, his gaze was in direct line with the generous swells of her breasts.
Look away.
Look anywhere but where you are currently staring.
And now he knew the tribulations that had led Adam to commit the rest of mankind to eternal damnation. Forcibly, he lifted his gaze, and looked the second-worst place.
A question puckered the place between her eyebrows.
Mortified heat splotched his face, and he froze, certain she’d gleaned that he’d been ogling her like some manner of cad, which he’d prided himself on never being.
“Have you nothing to say?”
His mind went blank. “I . . .” No, he usually didn’t. This time, his inability to recall had nothing to do with his usual tongue-twistedness, and everything to do with her nearness and the curve of her—
Think, man. Think.
About what had brought him here. Whatever that source of contention was between them. Or the last matter they’d been speaking on. What was it . . . ? What was it . . . ?
“Scarsdale!” he shouted, at last landing on it.
The confusion in her brow deepened. Sylvia did a search about the room as if he’d summoned the gentleman himself. He came to his feet so that his gaze needn’t get him into any more trouble than it had . . . since he himself was already seeing to that task.
No . . . not Scarsdale. “That is, I’m here as it appears your meetings have led to not only a series of broken hearts amongst many but also a revolt against the state of marriage, and that simply cannot be.”
Chapter 6
When she’d been married and her husband living, Sylvia had never been friends with the men of Norman’s social circle. In fact, she’d rather detested them. Given to still carousing when most gentlemen had settled down, and indulging in more spirits than was prudent, they’d not been the manner of men she’d ever understood Norman wishing to keep company with.
With the exception of Clayton Kearsley, the Viscount St. John.
Not that she and Clayton had been friends, per se.
At least, they hadn’t called one another that.
In large part because her mother, and society at large, didn’t tolerate friendships between men and women.
As such, they’d called one another “ballroom companions” in jest, their secret language that made a mockery of the rules that prevented friendships.
By chance at one of Lady Waverly’s affairs, Sylvia had happened to find herself beside Clayton. They’d exchanged teasing words and jests and then gone off to the card rooms. From that moment on, she’d found herself . . . friendly . . . with him. They had been equally poor at playing, and had laughed over the inanity of card games and dice. Just as they’d bonded over their equally poor footwork, which had them keeping one another company on the side of every ballroom dance floor—“wallflowers,” the two of them, as she’d coined them.
And for a brief time, before Norman had entered her life, she’d believed that Clayton might offer for her. But he hadn’t. And then her late husband had swept Sylvia off her feet . . . quite literally. Norman, who had waltzed flawlessly and insisted that he was capable of carrying her, should she so need it. And anyone present at the ball or who’d read of it in the papers, who’d not been given to sighing, had spoken longingly of the grand love between Sylvia and society’s reformed rogue, Lord Norfolk.
From that moment on, her heart had been lost, and Clayton had . . . disappeared. She’d seen him but two times after that: at her wedding, when he’d stood beside Norman as his best man. And the day of Norman’s funeral services, when Viscount St. John had come to pay his respects.
Until today.
Now he should arrive—he should come here to call her out and question her motives?
But then, wasn’t that the way when it came to gentlemen? Nay, to all men?
Your meetings have led to not only a series of broken hearts amongst many but also a revolt against the state of marriage, and that simply cannot be . . .
Moving back several steps so she didn’t have to look quite so high to meet his eyes, Sylvia fixed a cool stare on him. “And tell me why this . . . ‘revolt against marriage,’ as you call it, cannot be?”