Page 28 of The Gentleman’s Leading Lady

Lord Baeccon jerked his head up at this, as if he were a hound on the scent. Andover smothered a snort and pointed for Cerys to hand him the plate of buttered cauliflower at her elbow. “Best not pursue that point too keenly, Miss Evans.”

Cerys tipped her head to the side, a touch coy, a touch challenging. “No, indeed, now I am avid to hear more. Did you quite break his heart, Lady Baeccon?”

The other woman’s lip curled with self-satisfaction. The carmine red had not yet rubbed off with her meal, for she cut and ate only the smallest bites. Her gullet too full of her own poison to give her appetite for much else, Cerys surmised.

“I’m afraid I quite leveled the man, poor thing. Some will shake off a heartbreak, but Dante…I fear he was quite fascinated with me.” She turned a sultry stare on Lord Baeccon. “But of course, I couldn’t think of another man once my Crispin began to court me. He simply drove every other thought straight out of my head.”

“No doubt many a wounded heart was left strewn in your wake when you bestowed your hand, your ladyship,” Dutton said gallantly.

“You flatter me, sir,” her ladyship simpered. “But I would only warn Miss Evans not to cast her heart in a direction where she can receive no answer. I’m afraid I left poor Dante a shell of a man. I doubt he’ll ever really recover, as deeply as he felt for me. I’m simply grateful the poor dear didn’t do himself in, even if he can no longer take pleasure in the world.”

“Oh, I’m convinced Mr. Manelli will not have given up on pleasure altogether,” Cerys said, casting another arch glance down the table.

Manelli returned her glare, a solid volley.

Mame set her wrists on either side of her plate, holding her utensils and fixing Cerys with a look as her words rippled in the developing silence.

“He takes great pleasure in his work is what I mean to say,” Cerys went on. “In fact, I would have once wagered that nothing could touch his heart but passion for the beautiful works he creates. Is creating.” She smiled. “But then, though I blush to say it, he developed the most ardent attachment to me.”

Her ladyship glared. “He couldn’t, child. I emptied that man of the will to live.”

“Indeed? I see no signs of that,” Cerys lied. So that explained the stricken look on Mr. Manelli’s face when her ladyship appeared in the drawing room. Before she was Lady Baeccon, this woman had carved his heart out of his chest and made a snack of it. “Perhaps Mr. Manelli is more resilient than you thought. Or perhaps…”

She let the moment unspool. Her ladyship leaned forward, playing into her hands. “Perhaps what?”

“I only meant—and what a fortunate circumstance if so—that perhaps you did not bruise Mr. Manelli’s heart as much as you feared.” Cerys smiled sweetly. “For otherwise, why would he cast it upon me? Dot, be a dear and pass over those roasted Brussels sprouts. I adore them.”

Her ladyship’s gaze shot to the end of the table. Manelli was ignoring them both and instead explaining something to Dorsey, which he attempted to illustrate using gestures, then a poor structure erected with a cloth napkin and cutlery. Dorsey nodded and pointed to various angles and points of knife and fork.

Cerys smiled. Not the behavior of a man languishing of heartbreak. And Lady Baeccon saw this.

“If he made you any protestations, my dear, he is merely toying with you. You mustn’t believe a word that man says.”

“Now really, your ladyship. Why should Mr. Manelli not be sincere in his affections to another as you believe he was with you? And if your attachment was not strong enough to prevent you from falling thoroughly in love with milord Baeccon, then I wonder if Mr. Manelli’s devotion was not what you thought, either.”

Cerys smiled sweetly. “Or perhaps we simply see in action the power of love to heal and refresh the human heart. Why, it simply is the most amazing force, isn’t it? Love, I mean.”

Mame snorted and raised her glass to her mouth to hide the unladylike noise. Dot swiftly agreed to drink with her. Cerys raised her glass as well.

“To new projects, and new loves!” she cried, and they drank.

Dante—Mr. Manelli—looked up the table again. At Cerys, not at Lady Baeccon. His eyes narrowed as if the dratted man knew the snare she had just set for him.

Cerys had never in her life made a bid to seduce a man. There had been a John Jones back in Newport, a young blade who was the son of one of the town’s wealthier gentlemen, and who thought very well of himself for his cleverness in having been born to a rich father. John Jones dressed in the style of a beau, bragged of his bets on horse races and cock fights, boasted of the compliments from fine ladies he won when visiting Bristol or London, and was generally considered bang up to the marks in all respects.

Cerys knew he was a fool and yet couldn’t stop herself from hoping to win his notice anyway, the few times their paths crossed. But she had learned that while she might don a frock in the latest style, tame her wild mane into Grecian curls, and clasp on the baubles that her friend Gwen liked to give her and which Cerys never had opportunity to wear in the course of her normal days, it was still not enough for an enterprising young man to take notice. A girl must exert herself to get in the way of a self-absorbed man going about his daily business.

Fortunately, she’d had two years of practice on stage in getting people to notice her. She threw Mr. Manelli the look that Kate Hardcastle used to allure Charles Marlow in She Stoops to Conquer. She infused all the mischief and thrills that Letitia promised Doricourt in The Belle’s Stratagem. In short, she sent him a look designed to dazzle and attract.

Manelli simply looked confused. Then, suspicious. He darted a furtive look at Dorsey, then Mame, then at Andover, as if trying to determine who had put Cerys up to mischief.

His gaze paused on Lord Baeccon, who glanced between his wife and Cerys as if he didn’t know whom to skewer first. Then his survey landed on Dutton, who was trying to interest Cerys with a jelly molded into the shape of a lion. Manelli’s eyelids tensed at he observed this exchange—he did not like Dutton’s attentions to Cerys.

Very well. She would start there. Quite forgetting the etiquette that said she must drink with a partner, Cerys bolted another swallow of wine to fortify herself for the task ahead. Somehow she must inform Dante Manelli that, in addition to making him the company’s architect, she had also cast him in the role of her lover.

She could imagine a myriad range of responses he might have to her ploy, and none of them were encouraging.

The ladies withdrew to the parlor after, and the wait was unendurable.