Page 9 of Love and the Shameless Lady

He had a truly charming smile. The warmth in his eyes unnerved her. She looked away.

“Your father was a scholarly sort of man?” he asked.

“I suppose he may have been. He used visits to ancient sites as an excuse to go whoring, or so my mother told me.”

Sir Julian didn’t bat an eye. Well, he’d heard her singing vulgar songs, so why would he?

“By that time he was dead, so I don’t know for sure. But she hated him, so it may have been a lie or hysteria on her part. She became quite unbalanced after my sister drowned.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“It was long ago. An unfortunate accident, but she blamed my brother and never spoke to him again. I, on the other hand—” Why, she wondered, was she blurting her family’s sordid history to this man she scarcely knew?

“You, on the other hand?” he prompted.

She’d come perilously close to confiding in him. Instead, she should use this conversation as an opportunity to drive him away.

“I sometimes wonder if I seduced Reggie, the smuggler, not because I fancied myself in love with him, but to get my mother to stop talking to me, too.” To stop lamenting how tedious life was in Lancashire, how she dared not bring Daisy to London for fear of Colin’s influence, how much happier she would have been if the dead, sainted Emma were alive and the living, boring Daisy had been the one to drown.

She thrust those thoughts away. She knew better than to care.

“One’s relations can certainly be trying,” he said calmly. “I wasn’t much acquainted with my own parents.” Without the slightest sign of unease, he returned to their earlier subject. “I walked much of Hadrian’s Wall not long ago and spent a few days in York, but the weather has been so fair that this past week I went to the seaside instead.”

“How-How delightful that must be.” She couldn’t contain a tiny sigh. “Did you go bathing?”

“Indeed I did. Do you enjoy sea-bathing?”

“I’ve never been and most likely never shall.”

“Why ever not? There are plenty of bathing machines for the ladies.”

“Yes, with dunkers to put one in the water! Not for me, thank you. I know how to swim, but public bathing would not do at all.”

“Where do you swim, then?”

“I haven’t for years, but as a child I spent part of every summer at Garrison House, where there’s a lake.”

“Ah yes, Lord Garrison is your cousin. I knew his wife before her marriage, but I’m barely acquainted with him.”

“Are you one of those who shunned him?”

A crease appeared between his brows. She shouldn’t have said that. He'd been remarkably polite about her own peccadilloes, and now she’d as good as insulted him.

That’s what she did nowadays, threw insults right and left to see who cared and who didn’t.

“I’ve never shunned anyone that I recall. I met him at Tattersall’s once or twice, that’s all. He was rather stiff at first, but agreeable enough once we got to discussing horseflesh.”

“Because at first he expected to be given the cut direct.”

“I don’t listen to slander, Miss Warren, nor do I pass judgement based on it.”

“How frightfully upright of you,” she snapped. “But in my case, it’s not slander. It’s the truth.” They reached the crossroads at last. “Here we must part ways, as I keep Snappish in my brother’s stable.”

That frown again. “And then you’ll return to the Diving Duck?”

Ulterior motives again? “Yes, in the gig. I don’t need an escort. Good-bye.”

She thought he would insist, as he’d done in Liverpool, but he merely bowed.