Page 65 of The Seduction of an English Scoundrel

“Nothing happened,” Jane said unconvincingly.

Caroline gave her a cool tiger-eyed stare. “He took you behind the potting shed.”

“And I was going to show him the bulbs Aunt Matilde sent from Brussels.”

“Is that why the top three buttons of your riding jacket are unfastened?” Miranda asked with an innocent look. “Because you were showing him your bulbs?”

“I had gone riding in the park,” she said indignantly. “It was warm this afternoon.”

Caroline sighed. “I’m sure it was. Oh, Jane, my sensible, respectable, scandal-free sister, how could you let this happen?”

She nudged a stone with the tip of her shoe. “I ask myself that every hour.”

They flanked her on the flagstone walkway. “It’s all so unlike you, Jane,” Miranda said, staring at her eldest sister’s profile. “You know what he is.”

“I’m not exactly sure what he is,” Jane said in a pensive voice. But whatever it was, she liked it very, very much. “I only know that he does not deserve my deception.”

“Are you going to tell him?” Caroline asked hesitantly.

“I have to, don’t I?” Jane replied in distress. “Although I keep hoping that by some miracle he’ll decide he’s done his duty, and he’ll never have to find out the truth.”

Caroline frowned. “Not unless Nigel vanishes from England and never returns. And certainly not as long as you . . . show him your bulbs.”

“Would you like us to tell him for you?” Miranda asked after a moment of reflection.

“No,” Jane said forcefully. “That would be the coward’s way out.” She paused, biting her lower lip. “I shall tell him on Friday.”

“Think this through very carefully,” Caroline said. “If Sedgecroft decides to betray your confidence out of anger, another scandal on the heels of the first will be the end of you. We are not entirely sure we can trust him to keep your secret.”

“I cannot see him merely shrugging off the whole thing without a grudge,” Miranda added ominously. “A Boscastle might make an excellent friend, but I would not wish for one as an enemy.”

The same thought had crossed Jane’s mind more than once. She stared back at the potting shed, feeling another chill of foreboding go through her. What an unbearable prospect. All that charm and male energy turned to anger, to retaliation. All the delicious fun they shared cast under a shadow of deceit.

“I shall have to take that risk, won’t I?” she said firmly.

And another scandal would not be the end of her at all. Losing Grayson’s trust would.

Grayson realized he was heading into treacherous, uncharted territory with Jane. More than once he even considered calling off their arrangement, but he could not bring himself to it, making up a dozen excuses to continue seeing her. At the very least he decided he should make an attempt to put her out of his mind when they were not together. He’d been neglecting his own affairs anyway. He had never felt comfortable wallowing in the idle affairs of the aristocracy.

Business matters at the wharves awaited him. He’d vowed to investigate a rumor that Drake intended to follow in Brandon’s ill-fated path and serve in the East India Company’s ranks. Grayson could not afford to think about a woman all day long, no matter how appealing she was.

Yet he thought of little else, and found himself constantly looking forward to seeing Jane again. He felt eager to share some amusing event with her, or to discuss his concerns about the family, to seek her advice.

What had their arrangement become?

He did not dare speculate.

Another five days sped by, and Jane still could not dredge up the courage to make her confession. Five days of Sedgecroft occupying her time, seducing her spirit, five of the happiest and most terrifying days in her life. Happy because he made her laugh with his good-natured audacity and honesty, terrifying because she realized she was more than a little in love with a man whose courtship of her was a generous charade.

Terrifying because of the secret that stood between them.

The handful of hopeful suitors who actually dared to call on her were turned away with polite excuses. She even refused to go shopping with Cecily on their weekly excursion to Bond Street, not wishing to be lectured again. Instead, she and Grayson went boating in Chelsea with Simon and Chloe, racing against Drake’s boisterous crowd. Naturally Grayson’s boat won.

The next evening they attended a ball, and on the Thursday night before Doomsday, the date designated for her confession, the two of them went to a play with her parents and returned home alone when Lord and Lady Belshire decided to play cards with an elderly friend in Piccadilly.

“See her safely home, Sedgecroft,” Lord Belshire said, approving of this arrangement only because Jane seemed happier than she had been—well, since before she started planning that ill-fated wedding, actually. And no one had heard a word from that cruel wretch Nigel. So Belshire felt heart-sorry for his eldest daughter, sorry enough to encourage her to spend time with a purported rogue who was proving himself to be more reliable than his cousin.

“Simon and the two girls will be home,” he added as a precaution. “So the pair of you will not be alone.”