His footman brought a message straight back.Please come now.
He could have used his town carriage, but he was sick of travel. Besides, her house in Brook Street was only a short distance away, so he decided to walk. He knew Cecily’s house well—it was small but exquisite and had been left to her on her doting husband’s death. He knocked and was let in by a maid, which surprised him. No butler? No footman?
‘My lord,’ said the maid after curtsying low. ‘Her ladyship awaits you in her sitting room upstairs.’
That was odd too, because he had expected her to receive him in her elegant drawing room. But he knew the house, of course, and knew which door led to her private sitting room, where her familiar perfume alerted him to her presence. She was reclining on a chaise longue, looking like a painted porcelain figurine with her perfect complexion and her dark hair falling in loose curls past her shoulders. All she wore was a thin muslin robe tied with a sash around her waist, and she might as well not have worn it at all, because it was obvious she had on nothing underneath.
Damn.He was well-used to this kind of set-up from various man-hungry females, and he felt suspicion chilling him as she rose in her usual elegant manner and lifted her arms to pushback her long hair. ‘Dan,’ she said. ‘Oh, Dan. If only you knew how much I’ve missed you.’
‘Where are your footmen?’ he asked curtly. ‘Your butler? I’ve seen no one except for that maid.’
She glided closer. ‘I needed to be alone with you. You see, I am so sorry. I never meant for you to be badly hurt. I realise I’ve made a terrible mistake—’
He brushed aside her outstretched hand. ‘You told me you have news about my mother. Is it true, or is this another of your tricks?’
‘It’s true, I swear!’ She went to sit down again but he remained standing. ‘You see, I recently met a Frenchman—an exiled aristocrat in London—who knew your mother once, in the port of Le Havre. He told me that she died, many years ago.’
Dan had always known it somehow. He said tiredly, ‘Tell me everything. You owe me this, at least.’
She rearranged the folds of that flimsy robe before meeting his gaze again. ‘Your mother was known in Le Havre as the English countess. This Frenchman thought—everyone did—that the title of “Countess” was a lie, because she was almost penniless.’
‘What about the man she ran away with?’
‘Apparently he left her within months of them arriving in France.’
‘Then how did she live?’
She hesitated. ‘She found another lover. When he left her, she moved on to yet another. I’m sorry. She must have been desperate. The man who told me all this said she was already very ill when he met her and she went to a pauper’s grave.’
That was when Cecily must have registered Dan’s expression, because she hurriedly added, ‘Dan, this was many, many years ago. You would still only have been a boy. You could have done nothing to help her.’
Dan was consumed by a mixture of bitterness and slowly rising anger. He said at last, ‘Are you sure this ugly story is not something you’ve concocted to get me here? Because it certainly seems like it.’ He gestured to the intimate setting, the low candlelight, her attire.
Cecily rose to her feet again in all her stunning perfection. ‘No! I thought you would want to know, even though it’s many years since she left. I knew the news would come as a shock, and I hoped that maybe I could comfort you?’
Once more she was coming towards him and he’d almost forgotten how cunning she was, because she had let her muslin gown slip from her shoulder, allowing one perfect breast to be exposed. ‘Dan,’ she murmured, ‘You cannot imagine how I’ve longed for you—’
Dan put up both hands palms outwards to ward her off. He said in an expressionless voice, ‘Cecily. I want you to know that you simply don’t matter to me anymore. There will be no marriage, no renewal of our affair or whatever you’re after—it’s all over between us. Do you understand? Now that you’ve given me your news, you’ll excuse me if I leave.’
‘No,’ she called as he made for the door. ‘Stay, please!’
He turned and saw her gazing up at him with those dark-lashed eyes that had once tempted him. ‘Dan, that wonderful house we planned, overlooking the sea. I often think of it. Are you enjoying life there?’
‘I shall be selling it once the summer is over.’
‘I am sorry you and I were never able to share it together.’
He didn’t reply, because there was nothing to say. Instead, he let himself out of the house then set off without caring where the hell he was going, because what he needed was to get away from there. Not just away from Mayfair, but right out of the city. It was as if his whole being was tainted by Cecily and her tricks.
Was the story of his mother something she had cunningly concocted, to draw him back to London and to her? But if what she’d said was true—and he feared it was—then it meant the rekindling of painful memories. As Dan walked on, he thought,if only I had known.But as Cecily said, what could he have done? He had been a child when his mother left.
After traversing Green Park he went on past Buckingham House until he reached the river, but he hardly saw any of it. He was thinking of a lady so unlike Cecily it was hard to imagine—a lady with fair hair and wondrous green-gold eyes who challenged him at every step to think, truly think about what he was doing with his life. He didn’t know quite what Kate Summerby meant to him yet, or what he meant to her. But he did know that he was missing her already.
He was well aware that she had loathed her Season and had come to Clematis Villa to escape a life of exploitation by her sister. She now had the money and the means to live independently, and he gathered she had no intention of giving up that freedom, certainly not to a womanising rake who’d gone far beyond the rules of propriety during a carriage ride. How had she felt about him afterwards? How did she feel about him now?
Seeing Cecily again had reinforced Dan’s belief that Kate Summerby wasdifferent.Yes, she was not only the bewitching beauty who had danced with him on a lamplit lawn and warmed his stone-cold heart, but she was also, quite possibly, the one person who could heal him of the bitterness of his past.
Would she want to, though? He wasn’t sure. But he knew that he had to find out.
