Page 65 of Love and the Shameless Lady

“Let me be the one to greet Lord Hythwick first,” she asked of her brother. “He is my special guest.”

“Do as you like,” Miles said. “I’m sure I can’t manage anything obsequious enough for your taste.”

“I don’t ask that you be obsequious,” Gloriana said. “He’s only one rank higher than you, and therefore respect is all that’s required.”

“Respect that pompous bore? Ha!” Miles walked off.

Melinda, bless her, promised to be warm and welcoming. “Are you sure you wish to wait here? If you stay comfortably in the drawing room, Reams will call you when the earl arrives.”

“Lord Hythwick is the perfect aristocrat and well worth waiting for.” Gloriana resumed her pacing, this time before the front door. As a child, she had always paced when thinking, especially when dreaming up some mischief—the sort that invariably got them into trouble.

“I need The Lady’s Revenge now,” Julian said, steering Daisy toward the stairs. “I want to have a look at it, although I’m not sure whether I’ll have to read it.”

Because The Lady’s Ruin was such a bore. Or utterly stupid. Or . . .

“Because, as I told you earlier, the clue we need must be in the first book,” he said. “The murderer didn’t know exactly what he would find in the second book. Something in the first story frightened him enough that he was desperate to suppress the second one.”

“But there’s nothing real in the first book, or the second for that matter. It’s all imaginary.”

“Yes, but it’s based on reality. It happens in England in the present day, and somehow your imagination has hit upon a present-day secret. It may be a scandal which would cause someone’s ruin—we’ve already considered that possibility—or something to do with smuggling or espionage or another crime. Something that, if uncovered, would be disastrous for this particular individual. If he reads the second book and finds that his fears were groundless, he may not try to kill you after all. Why take the risk?”

“So we have to wait and see if there are more attempts? I don’t find that particularly comforting.”

“No, I think it’s wisest to assume the worst.”

Glumly, she nodded. “Horrid but safer.”

“We know from the last few lines of the first book that the heroine’s daughter intends not only to revenge her mother’s ruin, but to gather all the missing charms and restore them to her mother’s bracelet.”

“So . . . you think our villain is afraid someone will be inspired by the book to kill him?” She shook her head. “That doesn’t seem likely. Maybe gathering the charms is in some way similar to an activity the killer is involved in.”

“Perhaps. Most likely he’s gathering something else,” Julian said. “There must be a similarity, something we can’t see but that might be strikingly obvious to someone else, perhaps to any number of people. I intend to make a list of the charms, where they were lost, and where Dianthus finds them, unless you wish to do that, since you know both stories far better than I.”

“Very well,” she said dubiously. “It can’t do any harm, I suppose.”

“Where did you get the idea for a bracelet with valuable charms?”

She pondered for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Come now. You remembered where you got the inspiration for the charm in the shape of a queen.”

She shook her head. “Yes, because it was right in front of me, reminding me, but I haven’t the faintest notion where the idea for the bracelet itself came from. What sparks an idea for a story and what it becomes in the end are usually vastly different.”

“You’d better try to remember. Work it backwards in your mind, perhaps. Either it’s an extraordinary coincidence, or you saw or overheard something you shouldn’t have. It became something different in your story, but not different enough, since the murderer recognized it.”

“Very well,” she said again, “I’ll try.” It was an impossible task. “I may be able to remember the inspiration for each charm. I’m certain I didn’t get the idea from a real bracelet. I would remember that.”

“You’ll recall where it came from if you work at it,” he said.

“How can you be so sure?”

He smiled. “Because I have great confidence in you.”

“You scarcely know me.” And it’s going to stay that way. Why must he say such things? She wasn’t impervious to compliments, and coming from an attractive gentleman, they had an unwanted effect along with the welcome one.

“I’m a good judge of character.” A rueful expression crossed his face, as if he weren’t quite sure if this was true. So . . . it was just flattery.

How dispiriting, even though it shouldn’t be. They had reached her bedchamber. She whirled away in case he tried kissing her for effect again, found all three volumes of The Lady’s Revenge, and proffered them to him. Now he had no excuse for coming to her room again.