Читать книгу Secret Life of a Scandalous Debutante - Bronwyn Scott - Страница 11

When had she started calling him by his first name? Never mind that it sounded right. Beldon rose to his feet, playing the gentleman. ‘Miss Stefanov, how good to see you. Are you enjoying the fine weather?’ Good Lord, could he sound any more ridiculous? His greeting seemed extraordinarily stiff compared to her more effusive, warmer one.

She smiled again, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes, a reminder that she was not the usual débutante; she was far more worldly, able to understand the underlying nuances of conversation. He had not called her Lilya and she took it as a subtle rebuke. ‘The weather is lovely. We’ve had so little sun this year, it seems a special treat.’

The weather was duly dispatched and they stood facing one another for an awkward moment until Mr Brown broke in. ‘I’ll get the viscount’s things. My lord, I’ve laid out some trays if you’d like to begin looking.’

‘Yes, thank you, Mr Brown.’ Beldon turned back to the trays, immediately aware of his new dilemma. A gentleman did not ignore the presence of a lady, particularly when they were the only two people present. But a gentleman also did not discuss his affairs with a lady.

Lilya materialised at his side, having crossed the small space quietly. ‘It is awkward, is it not? All this formality when we’re not exactly strangers. It seems silly to have to pretend.’

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask precisely what they were when Mr Brown returned with a small package. ‘Here are the rings the viscount had sent in to be reset.’

Lilya took the package. ‘And the parure? Lady St Just said there would be two packages.’

Mr Brown excused himself again.

‘Val and Philippa are having the St Just jewels remounted in more modern settings,’ she explained. It was the perfect invitation to share his reason for being here. He chose to pass up the opportunity, but Lilya proved tenacious and perceptive.

‘Are you selecting a betrothal piece? ‘

He felt compelled to correct her. ‘No, there are jewels in the family vault for that. I merely wanted to select a sincerity piece.’

‘That’s a very kind gesture. I am sure whatever you choose will be lovely.’

That decreed a certain challenge. Would she tell him the truth if he picked something unacceptable? He had a rather perverse urge to find out. He picked up a necklace. ‘I was thinking of this.’

The piece was pretty enough, but he knew it was wrong, too showy for his purposes. Would Lilya know? Would she say anything? A typical lady would not dare to contradict him. Lilya did not hesitate. She smiled and shook her head.

‘Perhaps after you’re officially engaged,’ she said gently. ‘A necklace is too sophisticated, I think, for your intentions at present.’

Something dangerous and volatile sparked to life between them. He should leave well enough alone, but the devil in him was already awake and wanting his due. How would she handle it?

‘What are those intentions?’ Beldon asked in gravelly tones more appropriate for seduction than shopping. Truly he knew better than to stoke this ambiguous fire she roused in him.

‘You tell me. They’re your intentions.’ She studied him with sharp eyes, missing nothing of the innuendo, of the change in the atmosphere between them.

There it was. She’d called him out. This was his chance to declare himself. What a bold piece she was and yet she pulled off that boldness without seeming unladylike. Really, it was quite admirable.

Mr Brown returned with the second package. He handed it to Lilya and noted the necklace still dangling from Beldon’s hand. ‘Ah, you’ve made a choice, then? The necklace is very nice.’

Beldon skewered the smaller man with an imperial stare, his voice cold. ‘Very nice, but very wrong for my cause,’ he corrected. ‘A decent gentleman would not give such a piece to his bride.’

The man had the good grace to colour at the implication: he’d been caught toadying.

‘Perhaps something in pink?’ Lilya offered. It was meant to be a helpful suggestion, but Beldon saw the challenge behind it. Pink could only be for one person. But Lilya was right and Beldon saw no reason to disagree. A pink gem would be lovely and meaningful to Lady Eleanor. As long as they didn’t say Lady Eleanor’s name out loud, it wasn’t as if he was outright asking one woman to help him select jewellery for another.

Trays were taken away and others brought out from behind the locked cabinet, far more than he’d expected. He’d not anticipated such a variety. In tacit agreement, he and Lilya sat back down on the bench.

‘A ring, then?’ Beldon randomly chose one of the dozens of rings on display, suddenly less interested in what had brought him here in the first place and more interested in Lilya’s response. He had jewels aplenty in the Pendennys vault. He would save those for a wedding gift, or an anniversary gift. The Pendennys emeralds were heavy pieces. Every time he thought of Lady Eleanor in them, he imagined her bent over from the weight of them. They were not jewels for a girl.

Lilya laughed sweetly and took pity on him. ‘A bracelet or a pin would be best.’ She motioned to the jeweller. ‘You can put away all the trays but these three here.’

‘I can see that I would have made a disaster of this on my own.’ He should not have said that. It was entirely wrong, entirely too familiar. He was joking with her as if they were friends when everyone knew a man could not be friends with a lady. He could feel his jaw tightening. It was too easy to be charmed by Lilya—by her graceful gestures, by the subtle way she’d taken control of the situation.

She threw him a sidelong glance as if to say she doubted that, that she was on to his game of provoking her. Her eyes danced with an implicit understanding of their secret game. She turned back to study the trays. ‘This coral-and-pearl piece would be perfect.’

It was indeed quite the perfect piece: a cameo habille, a jewel within a jewel. Beldon could find no quarrel with it. He would have selected it himself, left to his own devices. In spite of the game he played with Lilya, he did know a thing or two about jewellery. The cameo was of angelskin coral in the palest shades of pink, a tiny stone of pink jasper set on the cameo’s bosom giving it the jewel within a jewel. Eleanor would be able to wear it pinned to a gown.

Lilya leaned forwards and spoke quietly, a finger tracing the fine lines of the cameo. ‘What better way to tell her of your feelings than that you view her as your very own jewel within a jewel, a woman you love as much for her beauty on the outside as her beauty on the inside?’

The sentiment surprised him. Is that what women saw in jewellery? No wonder they coveted it. Did men have any idea what secret messages they were sending? More importantly, is that what he meant by giving Lady Eleanor this gift? Admittedly, Lilya’s words had something of a shocking effect on him. The sentiment she expressed was noble and fine. But could he give Lady Eleanor such a gift, knowing the message behind it to be a lie? He hoped such sentiment would be true eventually. As of today, it was not. He had no idea if Lady Eleanor was a lovely person on the inside.She was precisely what she’d been bred to be, a blank slate for her husband to write on. A blanker slate, Beldon could not imagine. He simply didn’t know. He knew only that she fit his criteria. He stilled for a moment, a horrible thought coming to him.

What if your criteria are wrong? What if you need more? The thought was practically blasphemous. He should not even give credence to it. But there’d been a lot already today he should not have done, starting with allowing Lilya to sit down beside him. He’d played with fire and now he was getting burned, absolutely and thoroughly scorched.

‘What is it? You look pale all of a sudden.’ Lilya unconsciously placed a hand on his arm, her face full of concern within the frame of her bonnet. ‘I hope you’re not coming down with a spring cold. Philippa won’t forgive you if you get sick before Val’s Rose Gala. She’s spent days planning it to celebrate his new hybrid.’

Stubbornly, Beldon pushed the traitorous idea aside. There was no room for doubt. He stood up, shaking off Lilya’s hand. ‘I’m quite fine. The cameo is perfect. Mr Brown, I would like to have it wrapped up so I may take it right away.’

He must forgo the pleasure of such doubts. This moment of weakness was nonsense. More than one man had been the recipient of cold feet. It was part and parcel of the engagement ritual and the embracing of the unknown. He told himself it was actually nice to get cold feet. It reminded him of how important this decision was. It was worthy of being agonised over. If it was something that could be hastily done, everyone would do it.

The jeweller returned with the cameo in a small blue velvet box tied prettily with a pale blue ribbon. ‘I’ve done it up neatly for you, my lord. The ladies put as much store in the wrapping as they do what’s actually inside the box.’ He chuckled.

Beldon tucked the box into his coat pocket. The package was small enough not to draw attention. No one would even know he had it with him. He could carry it with him discreetly and wait for the right moment. Or, came the errant thought, he could forget about it, letting it lie unclaimed in a pocket for, oh, say ages, and no one would be the wiser.

‘Ahem, my lord, if I may be so bold, I happened to notice this piece in the back. We haven’t displayed it yet. I just acquired it a few days ago from a gem dealer. Since you were looking for something pink, I wanted to show it to you—it’s a bracelet of silver and tourmaline.’

Lilya gasped, enchanted at the sight of it. ‘It’s beautiful.’

Encouraged, the jeweller went on, ‘It is straight from Burma and the mines of Mynnamar. If I might, Miss Stefanov?’ The jeweller deftly draped the bracelet about her wrist, but struggled with the clasp.

‘Here, allow me,’ Beldon volunteered unthinkingly. He reached out, gently capturing her wrist, and fastened the bracelet, but not without marveling at the feel of her fine, narrow bones beneath her glove. Her wrist was as delicate and slender as the bracelet itself—a perfect match that sent a jolt of unmistakable desire straight to his male core. Beldon stepped back, hoping to distance himself.

Lilya held up her wrist, the deep shades of the tourmaline catching the light. The bracelet slid towards her elbow. ‘It’s a little big.’

‘Links can be removed easily if it’s too large,’ Mr Brown put in quickly, no doubt smelling another sale in the air, or perhaps something else Beldon did not care to give name to. Beldon did not care for the suggestion Mr Brown intimated, that somehow he’d be purchasing jewellery also for Lilya. The assumption carried with it an inappropriate implication about the nature of their relationship.

‘It’s a beautiful piece, sir, thank you for sharing it. But I will pass. The bracelet is not in my intended’s style.’ Beldon was careful to emphasise the ‘my intended’ part. It wasn’t a lie. The bracelet was entirely wrong. It was too elegant, too subtle, too rich in colour, for an English rose like Lady Eleanor. The piece needed someone with dark hair and slightly foreign looks to be carried off. The piece needed someone like Lilya. Beldon could not imagine the bracelet on another’s wrist after seeing it on hers and that was dangerous ground indeed. It was time to go.

‘I am ready for sustenance, how about you?’ Beldon said, betraying none of the comparisons dominating his mind at the moment. He helped Lilya with the bracelet clasp and returned it to the jeweller. ‘May I interest you in a stop at Fortnum and Mason’s before we head home?’

Ah, he’d chosen wisely, Beldon thought twenty minutes later. Tea was precisely the thing he needed to restore his balance. He could not recall the last time he’d enjoyed sitting down to flavoured hot water and little sandwiches so much. If he’d been alone, he would have taken refreshment at his club over on St James’s. The meal would have been more substantial, but the company less so.

‘You knew more about jewels than I realised. Your taste was impeccable,’ Beldon complimented as they finished their second pot. It was nearly time to go. He could not justify lingering any longer.

Lilya blushed becomingly, but her eyes darkened and Beldon sensed she was holding an internal debate with herself. Fine. He would wait. At last, aware that he wasn’t going to fill the silence until she spoke, she said, ‘My family dealt in jewels in Negush and, before that, my grandfather was a jeweller to the sultan in Constantinople.’

The admission stunned him into silence. She said it as naturally as if she’d said, ‘My family own dairy cows in Herefordshire’.

‘I never knew’ was all he could manage. Maybe he’d have to call for a third pot of tea after all. One didn’t just get up from the table and leave a comment like that unexplored.

‘You don’t talk of your life very much and yet I think your life has been full of fascinating experiences. Certainly, very different experiences than what one has here.’ Beldon held her eyes across the table, wanting her to see the sincerity in his own, wanting to see the veils lift from hers. The more he knew her, the more mysterious she became. There were depths here. ‘I would like to hear about them. You don’t have to forget about them simply because you’re in England now.’

‘It is all in the past and sometimes forgetting can be better than remembering.’

But surely not better than never knowing. Beldon would not be put off. ‘Jewels are not a poor man’s trade. What was your father to the empire?’ He gave in to the inevitable and signalled for another pot of tea.

Then, just as she had in the jewellery store when he’d deliberately selected the wrong piece, Lilya smiled and took pity on him. In soft tones of confidentiality she said, ‘We were hospodars. Do you know the word?’ Beldon shook his head. Her next words took his breath away altogether. ‘We were princes.’

The disclosure all but flattened him. She’d been born to great wealth and privilege and then it had all been taken away. This was not what he’d expected. He’d envisioned her raised in modest surroundings, middle class, perhaps, with a merchant father caught up in the intrigues of larger men. He’d attributed her nervousness to feeling overwhelmed by the jewels, out of her element, but clearly that was not the case. Her taste had been far too exquisite and this recent revelation confirmed it.

She was used to riches.

Lilya continued and Beldon listened intently for fear that she’d stop and he’d not get another chance to hear her answer. ‘We had our trade, but we also were responsible for collecting taxes for the sultan in our region.’ She shrugged here. ‘Many of the ruling families abused their power in being tax collectors. But the Stefanovs were always fair.’

She was used to power.

Riches and power. A deadly combination. And one that might explain the glimpse of worldliness he sometimes saw in her eyes, the way she carried herself with a certain degree of pride and confidence not found in the usual débutante.

She was not willing to say more and adroitly turned the conversation to his estate, plying him with questions regarding the upgrades and new technologies he was employing for higher crop yields.

‘I can see you love your home,’ Lilya said after a while. ‘I think it’s good for a lord to care so much for his people. A good leader is always ready to put his needs aside for the benefit of the people.’ She poured out the last of the tea, only getting half a cup. ‘Oh dear, I think we’ve drunk half the tea in England.’

Beldon laughed, the austere line of his mouth turning up into an approachable grin.

‘You should do that more often,’ Lilya remarked.

‘Do what?’

‘Laugh. Smile.’

‘I laugh. I smile,’ Beldon protested.

‘Not nearly enough. You have a wonderful smile, it was one of the things I noticed about you when we danced at the Fitzsimmons’ ball.’

‘And Mr Agyros? Does he have a wonderful smile as well?’ He was stoking the fires again. Lilya looked as if she’d been struck. It was not well done of him. He wished immediately he could take the words back.

Lilya stood up and gathered her things. Her tone was frigidly formal. ‘If I was not clear then, let me be clear with my gratitude now. I appreciated your interference although it was not necessary.’

Beldon rose along with his temper. He was angry with himself and this current gambit of theirs made an easy target. ‘My interference? Is that what you call it?’

‘What would you prefer I call it?’ Lilya said, undaunted.

‘How about “intervention”? “Interference” implies I was sticking my nose where it wasn’t wanted.’

‘Perhaps you were.’

‘Would you have preferred letting Mr Agyros kiss you?’

‘I can handle myself with a gentleman. Nothing would have proceeded without my permission.’ Lilya gave her hair a regal toss. ‘Now, I think it best you take me home. I want to make sure Philippa is feeling better. She was feeling poorly when I left this morning.’

He promptly left Lilya after a short visit with his sister to assure himself of her health. But his day seemed decidedly empty after that. Beldon had no appetite for the social engagements on his calendar that evening and he opted for a night in, poring over atlases in his library and searching his shelves for books about the Ottoman Empire and the hospodars.

That night he dreamed of a dark-haired woman wearing only the Pendennys emeralds.

In the morning, he sent a hurried note to Mr Brown. He’d take the tourmaline bracelet after all.