Silk Is For Seduction - Loretta Chase [129]
He was leaning forward now, listening intently. Pieces were falling into place: the way she spoke, her smooth French and her aristocratic accent . . . but she’d told him she was English. Well, then, she’d lied about that, too.
“I knew you weren’t quite what you appeared to be,” he said. “My servants took you for quality, and servants are rarely taken in.”
“Oh, we can take in anybody,” she said. “We’re born that way. The family never forgot they were aristocrats. They never gave up their extravagant ways. They were expert seducers, and they used the skill to find wealthy spouses. Being more romantic and less practical than their Continental counterparts, the men had great luck with highborn Englishwomen.”
“That must hold true for English men as well,” he said.
Her dark gaze met his. “It does. But I never set out to get a spouse. I’ve lied and cheated—you don’t know the half of it—but it was all for the purpose I explained early in our acquaintance.”
“I know you cheat at cards,” he said.
“I didn’t cheat during our last game of Vingt et Un,” she said. “I merely played as though my life depended on it. People in my family often find themselves in that position: playing a game on which their life depends. But cheating at cards is nothing. I forged names on our passports to get out of France quickly. My family often finds it necessary to leave a country suddenly. My sisters and I were taught the skill, and we practiced diligently, because we never knew when we’d need it. We were well educated in the normal ways as well. We had lessons in deportment as well as mathematics and geography. Whatever else we Noirots were—and it wasn’t pretty—we were aristocrats, and that was our most valuable commodity. To speak and carry ourselves as ladies and gentlemen do—you can imagine the fears it allays, the doors it opens.”
“I can see that it would be much easier to seduce an aristocratic English girl if you don’t sound like a clerk from the City or a linen draper,” he said. “But you married a cousin. You have a shop. You didn’t follow the same path.”
She got up abruptly from her chair and moved away in a rustle of petticoats. He rose, too, unsteadily, and he couldn’t tell whether that was the aftereffects of fighting and drinking or the hope warring with the certainty he’d lost her.
She walked to the library table and took up his notes. “Your handwriting is deplorable,” she said. She put them down and, turning back to him, said, “I haven’t told you about my mother.”
“An English aristocrat, yes? Or something else?”
She gave a short laugh. “Both.”
She returned to her chair, and he sat, too. His heart thudded. Something was coming, and it wasn’t good. He was sure of that. He was leaning forward, waiting. He was wanting it to be over with and hoping against hope it would be good news. But it couldn’t be good, else she wouldn’t be so ill at ease, she who was never ill at ease, mistress of every situation.
And what was wrong with him? She’d admitted to forgery! She’d told him she came from a line of blue-blooded French criminals!
“My mother was Catherine DeLucey,” she said.
He recognized the surname, but it took a moment for him to place it. Then he saw it: blue, vivid blue.
“Lucie’s eyes,” he said. “Those remarkable blue eyes. Miss Sophia, too. And Miss Leonie. I knew there was something familiar about them. They’re unforgettable. The DeLuceys—the Earl of Mandeville’s family.”
Her color came and went. She folded her hands tightly in her lap.
He remembered then. Some old scandal to do with one of Lord Hargate’s sons. Not the one who’d manhandled him yesterday, though. Which one? He couldn’t remember. His brain was slow and thick and aching.
She said,