What should she do now?
When she’d been pinned down on the sidewalk, about to become a victim of London’s criminality and her own stupidity, she’d sworn with the fervency of a new convert that she’d never again try to involve Bertie’s brother in her pathetic affairs.
Her resolution had been followed by gallons of tears, brought on by an overwhelming relief that for once, it seemed, she would walk away from an act of immense idiocy unscathed.
And then she’d seen the number on the door: 26. 26 Cambury Lane. And it had stopped her tears cold: Her rescuer was none other than Stuart Somerset himself.
Was it preordained that they should meet this way? Did it mean that her scheme wasn’t as harebrained as she’d thought? Should she, now that she’d cleaned up and repaired the worst of the damage to her hair, introduce herself and explain her purpose?
Except she couldn’t see herself broaching the subject to Stuart Somerset. As brief as their exchanges had been, she’d been struck by his remoteness, the remoteness of the absolutely perfect. He was the kind of man who looked down upon follies like hers as she would regard an infestation of bedbugs.
Stuart Somerset would gravely tell her that he did not believe her story of woe and reprisal for a moment. That she’d been sent by Bertie out of some malicious mischief. That he certainly wasn’t about to employ or sleep with a complete, not to mention dotty, stranger.
She could see herself belaboring the point, reminding him, in a manner both desperate and mean, of the pain they could cause Bertie. And he’d smile politely and show her the door. He had quite enough going on to cause Bertie any amount of pain. He didn’t need her help.
Stupid, stupid, stupid; she mouthed the words at the woman in the mirror, at her hollow eyes and tearstained cheeks. Yes, it was stupid. Stupid to come to London, stupid to believe that Stuart Somerset could be her answer, and doubly stupid to never once think through her plan to the conclusion: Bertie’s rage, her dismissal, her dismal chances of respectable employment elsewhere, given her now scabrous reputation, and Michael’s tears, when she must once again give him up.
Perhaps her aunt had been right. Perhaps she was indeed weak, dim, ridiculous—a waste of her mother’s womb—that after having already lost so much, she still stood ready to throw away everything else.
Well, she wouldn’t. She’d go down, thank Stuart Somerset profusely, and leave in the first available hansom. Mr. Somerset and she would remain strangers, and that was that.
Stuart left the morning room, where he’d finished the previous day’s copy of the Daily Mail, to fetch the whiskey from his study. Something made him turn his head as he crossed the front hall. She was there at the top of the first flight of steps, standing still, her reticule and hat in hand, the hair that had been all over her face smoothed back and put away.
He had been to a few balls and had seen his share of pretty young girls descending grand staircases. His own stairs were quite plain. Her jacket-and-skirt set of gray wool was hardly ravishing. Nor was she even all that young—a good few years into her twenties, at least. And still she stopped him cold.
She was not classically beautiful—her mouth a bit too big for her thin, undernourished face, her chin a bit too strong. But such eyes she had, pre-Raphaelite eyes, deep and mesmerizing, the sort of eyes that inspired verse in the dullest man. And such lips, the sort of lips that incited sin in saints and angels.
“You were quick,” he said.
“The damage was less substantial than I’d feared,” she said, descending slowly. She had splendid vowels, pure sounds that sang of family trees with roots going as far back as the Battle of Hastings. Who was she?
Her eyes were still visibly red-rimmed. She held them slightly downcast, discreetly taking in his dwelling. Sir Francis had willed to Stuart everything that was not entailed. The Lords Justices of Appeal, before whom the case had eventually gone, had given Stuart the Somerset town house on Grosvenor Square. But without the rent-rich urban tracts that went to Bertie, the sheep land that Stuart received couldn’t generate enough income for the upkeep of such a house.
So he’d sold the Somerset town house and much of its contents and bought the terrace house in Belgravia. The address was excellent. The house was more than adequate for a family of five, plus servants. And the furniture he’d retained from the other house—the best pieces—had been arranged with care and, he thought, some panache.