‘Me too.’ Charity nodded emphatically because she knew that always made her pretty golden curls bounce in the most becoming way. ‘Although the butterflies swiftly disappear as soon as I start to sing.’
‘Charity follows me,’ said her mother in case he missed that pertinent detail, ‘and we have no doubt that one day she too will be a leading lady once she has done her apprenticeship in the chorus. Although she has done such a good job inCosì fan Tutteat the Theatre Royal, she has now been made the understudy for the part of Despina.’ A minor role at the very best, thought Hope churlishly while simultaneously wondering why she was suddenly jealous of her sister’s success when she never had been before. Envious, perhaps, that she like Faith shared the same talents as their parents, but not in the competitive sense.
‘Though sadly, I have yet to perform her to an audience and time is rapidly running out to do so.’ Her youngest sister’s eyelashes fluttered attractively. ‘So nobody knows I am almost as good a soprano as my mother is.’
‘I’ve seen you, dear.’ Their mother beamed across the Persian. ‘And I can confirm that you are better than me. At your age, my voice was nowhere near as powerful and your musicality is second to none. Charity is destined for great things, Luke. Greater than I could ever have dreamed of.’
‘And who does Miss Hope follow?’ Bless Luke for trying to include her even though it galled that he felt he had to, but he had inadvertently kicked a hornets’ nest. Or a cuckoo’s nest, as she was very definitely the odd Brookes out.
‘Well she could have followed me on to the stage as she has a lovely singing voice, but sadly showed no interest in developing her talent.’ A point of contention her mother had never understood. ‘She dallied with it briefly, and was even taken on as a student of Signor Alessandro Ricci the great protégé of Bernacchi, but stopped her lessons at fifteen. Though lord only knows why. I never have fully got to the bottom of it when she was showing such promise.’
All eyes suddenly swivelled to her for a better explanation, and for a split second she almost blurted the whole mortifying truth before she stopped herself. ‘There is no mystery, Mama. I just didn’t enjoy it.’ A statement her musical mother always found inconceivable when music was her life. ‘As you are always saying, life is too short to waste your dreams on folly.’ Which was the truth, in a roundabout sort of way.
Hope had never possessed either the affection or the dedication to music to want to pursue it properly. She had always preferred words over music and plays over operettas. She could sing well enough if she put her mind to it—but nowhere near as well as her brilliant mother and sister. However, the biggest reason why her lessons had come to a shuddering halt was because, at the tender age of fifteen, fate had already cursed her with the body of a woman and the fêted Signor Ricci had been the first of a long and continual line of gentlemen who were mesmerised nonsensical by the sight of her generous bosoms. Especially when they rose, fell and heaved with the exertion singing opera required and it was a constant battle to prevent him from groping them. ‘My artistic talents lie elsewhere.’
‘My middle daughter fancies herself an author, Luke.’ Her father said this with the indulgent but ever so slightly dismissive tone both parents used when they mentioned her writing. Neither of them were great readers and did not understand how something as mundane as a book could captivate anyone in the same way as the expressive arts of painting and performing could. They were always supportive of dreams of course—the Brookes family were big on following dreams and fulfilling artistic ambitions—they just thought some dreams were more worthy than others. ‘She is always scribbling away at something, and if she isn’t writing her own books, she has her nose buried in somebody else’s.’
‘In my humble opinion, there is nothing better than a good book.’ Luke’s dark eyes locked with hers intently as he smiled, warming her with his approval and his unexpected support. ‘Like your daughter, I enjoy nothing more than putting my feet up and losing myself in a story. I follow my mother in that. She is a great reader and spent hours sharing that passion with me as a child. That love of literature has stayed with me ever since. Our parlour in Cornwall is always scattered with our favourite novels. I shall look forward to the day it will be scattered with some of Miss Hope’s too and I can have the bragging rights of knowing a famous author.’ They stared at each other as he smiled, and for a moment as the rest of the room receded, she found herself smiling back.
‘And speaking of parlours...’ Her sister suddenly sat forward, blocking him entirely from Hope’s view. Unless she craned around her. Which, of course, she would never do. Not when he apparently had the power to make her forget where she was. ‘You must enlighten us about the hideous puce parlour you inherited next door, my lord.’
‘I can assure you, Miss Charity, that that unsettling shade of wallpaper is merely the tip of the iceberg of the tasteless atrocities inflicted on my fine new house by its previous owner. So hideous and offensive, it makes my eyes water.’ Unwittingly, Charity had thrown Luke the perfect bone, and because he needed her father’s help finding suitable tradesmen to fix it quickly, he gratefully caught it, effectively killing all bookish conversation stone dead. Hope tried and failed not to feel disappointed at the abrupt change of subject which rendered her lowly artistic talents inconsequential and forgotten.
As usual.
‘Lord Clacton’s former mistress was a veritable paragon of bad taste, if her dreadful gaudy outfits were any gauge.’ Her mother shuddered theatrically as she pulled a disgusted face. ‘So I dread to think what her decor must look like.’
‘It’s appalling.’ The way he said it made appalling sound exciting and not to be missed. ‘If you would be kind enough to point me in the direction of some decent tradesmen to redecorate it, I will happily give you all a guided tour right this minute so you can experience the sheer horror for yourselves. Though I’ll warn you, once it is seen, it cannot be unseen and you’ll likely have nightmares for weeks.’
Chapter Seven
They almost flattened him in their haste to get to Number Twenty-Two. Like a pair of stampeding elephants, her mother and sister led the charge, leaving Hope and her still limping father trailing in their wake.
Once inside, Luke gestured to the drawing room and as her family rushed into it, he hung back so he could walk into the room last beside her, only winking at her conspiratorially when nobody else could see. ‘It’s a bit spartan at the moment but I fear that only makes it worse.’
‘Good heavens above!’ Her father’s involuntary gasp said it all, as the strange shade of pink flock moiré wallpaper was rather unsettling and the floral filled Grecian urn emblazoned over it in busy stripes did peculiar things to her eyes. Above, the moulded flowers on the coving and cornices had been painted pink to match, with incongruous lime-green leaves surrounding them. Worse, the window dressings matched the offensive puce and lime-green colour scheme and gave the rest of the room a decidedly unpleasant and somewhat sinister hue. And there were tassels and fringes everywhere. Luke’s unguarded description of a tart’s boudoir last night was an apt one, as it certainly had the air of a bawdy house about it. Not that she’d ever been in a bawdy house of course. ‘What a strange shade that is...’ The more she looked at it, the more the odd colour bore a striking resemblance to raw offal. ‘And I see she managed to find a Persian rug to match.’ A vile monstrosity of a carpet if ever there was one.
‘It’s a very bold room.’ For once, Charity was trying to be diplomatic. ‘But it certainly doesn’t suit you, my lord.’
‘By that she means it’s a gawdy monstrosity.’ Hope laughed. She couldn’t help herself because he looked ridiculous among it all. Even the chandelier and the wall lamps sprang a plethora of deep pink glass flowers among the fussy cascading crystal droplets.
‘Don’t be so tactless, Hope!’ Her mother instantly bristled, despite undoubtedly thinking much the same. ‘Monstrosity is such a damning word.’
‘I am sure Lord Thundersley realises it’s a garish monstrosity, else he wouldn’t be so desperate to change it.’
‘That I do.’ His dark eyes danced as they drifted to hers over the top of her mother’s significantly shorter head. ‘I cannot step in here without feeling bilious, Miss Hope. Why else would I bare my soul and throw myself at the mercy of your family within minutes of meeting you all? I am a stranger in a strange land, in desperate need of a pious good Samaritan.’ He was clearly enjoying over-egging things because those mischievous dark eyes were twinkling as he waited for hers to narrow, so she stared blandly back simply to thwart him.
‘It’s all going to need to be stripped but as long as the plaster is good underneath it shouldn’t take too long.’ Her father ran his fingers over one of the tasteless gold-and-cerise tassels on the curtain tieback and grimaced. ‘The only salvageable thing, as far as I can see, is the floor.’
‘The parquetisnice.’ Charity shot Luke her best come-hither smile as she oh-so-casually sauntered past him with unnecessarily undulating hips. ‘And the ceiling and fireplace are quite lovely.’ Then, much to Hope’s complete and irrational consternation, her flirty sister’s fingertips slowly caressed the back of one of the enormous wingbacks which they had witnessed being delivered with the rest of his small cartload of effects. ‘And the workmanship on these chairs is exquisite.’
To her relief, he didn’t flirt back or seem even remotely tempted to. If anything, he appeared oblivious of it. ‘It is, though I confess I bought them more for their size than the quality of the wood turning. The furniture in the Mayfair house was so delicate and spindly, I was terrified to sit on it in case I flattened it.’ Then he shrugged as he smiled at her sister before flicking Hope another amused glance which subtly let her know that he had noticed but was purposely ignoring it, and sent a distracting waft of something seductively spicy straight up her nostrils in the process. ‘Back in Cornwall we prefer substance over style and make things more robust.’
‘Including the gentlemen.’ Charity never missed an opportunity to beguile a new victim with some well-placed flattery and likely wouldn’t be happy until she had captured the heart of every breathing man in the capital, and beyond, under her seductive spell. In case he missed her overt message, she batted her eyelashes at him for good measure. ‘You must enlighten me as to where you acquired that jaunty earring. I heard a rumour it was on a pirate ship...’
He laughed and tugged the gold loop as if he had long forgotten it was there. ‘Sadly, nowhere near as exciting. I spent two summers on a herring boat and was goaded into the earring when I balked at the suggestion of a tattoo.’
‘But still, you were a sailor. I’ve always thought there is something romantic about the sea...’
