Constance shook her head, bewildered and alarmed. “But I thought you wished to go to town?”
“And so I do! But it has only recently occurred to me how brief and small an excitement that will be compared to the life I will spend ordering a manor and being a great lady. Unless, of course, I end a spinster, which is just as likely, you know. I am no great beauty.”
“Oh, don’t say that! I am certain you will take very well, and you won’t think it so boring then to have a gentleman offer for you.”
“But I’m not very certain I would mind being a spinster all that much! I have enough of a fortune from Mama to be comfortable. And I will have a lot more time for novels, and adventures, then.”
Con looked horrified. “You’re teasing me. Adventures? I know you would not really wish a life of infamy. But what is it you have been plotting?”
“I have decided on a dark gown and a veil to cover my face. For I mean to sneak out tonight, if all goes well and the weather stays clear, and see for myself this ghost of Paddlington Road.”
Constance turned to stare at her as if she had gone insane. “I beg your pardon? Lorelei, have you taken leave of your senses? I thought, I hoped, you were quizzing me! To go riding alone, at night? Aside from the fact that you would be quite ruined and in disgrace if discovered, before you have even been presented, there are many other dangers to consider!” her voice hushed, the younger lady sounded scandalised by this latest trick of her sister’s.
“I have told you, I will wear a veil and I will not be discovered! Don’t worry yourself so much, my dear. It is only one night, to do something I would never do otherwise. And there might not even be a passing carriage or anyone that might spot me at all. We are quite in the country, you know.”
“Your mare might take fright or throw you! You have never ridden in the dark. You might get lost!”
“Tulip is the gentlest horse on Earth, Con. You know she will obey me, and I am an excellent horsewoman. How could I get lost, when I will be following the road?” She gave her sister a pacifying smile.
“There might be bandits! What then?”
“Bandits? Here? I shouldn’t think there will be. But I will take father’s pistol, just in case, if it will be a comfort to you.”
“But you don’t know how to use it!”
“I have seen father honing his aim!” Lorelei insisted defensively. “And these bandits of yours won’t know that I have never shot a pistol before.”
When Constance still looked unconvinced, Lorelei sighed. “Please, Con. This is my only chance to do anything interesting before I must succumb to matrimony and old age. I need your help.”
Con hesitated a moment, anxiously brushing a ringlet behind her ear. “Oh, very well. But I am still certain that this is a very bad idea. And you must not be gone long.”
“Thank you.” Lorelei said warmly, very happy that she had a sister to aid and abet her.
*
It was very dark outside when Lorelei led Tulip, saddled and eager to be free of her stall, past the verge at the back of the house, where the sound of their passing was unlikely to be heard by anyone. She was dressed in her black riding habit, hat and veil, with the silver of her mother’s moonstone pendant against the pale skin the only colour on her person.
“Oh, Lorelei, this is not right!” Constance whispered urgently, coming closer to her sister. She had come out to keep watch and her apprehension has been growing steadily since Lorelei had put on her riding dress. “What if there really is a ghost? I think you ought not to go!”
Lorelei, patted her sister’s arm. “I am not afraid of the ghost. And I won’t give it up and go back inside either. Don’t fret, Con! I won’t be very long!” with those confident words, the young woman squeezed at the sides of her horse and took off into the night.
*
Lorelei thought that the ladylike reaction would have been to become frightened by the silence and the gloom, and hurry back home. A lady would even have learned not to be quite so fast in the future. But she found that she did not mind the dark – it made ghost hunting more exciting. She carefully picked her path along the carriage track which led away from the estate until, at last, she stood on a stretch of road not far from where the carriage had apparently turned over all those decades ago, under a towering old oak. She was fully prepared to feel a chill or hear whispers or weeping. Lorelei waited in quiet anticipation. It was very quiet, but she did not see anything remotely ghostly, and felt rather disappointed. She was about to resignedly turn Tulip back in the direction of the manor. Suddenly, Lorelei heard voices.
“The devil confound it!” a masculine voice swore. It was a low and cultured voice despite its obvious vexation.
“They said down in the village that this road is haunted, my lord,” a second masculine voice said, with a curious mixture of politeness and amusement.
“And I suppose you’re warning me not to wake the spirits with my own wrath, Howe.” The low velvet chuckle sent a shiver down Lorelei’s spine, but she ignored this strange reaction. Men! She realised there were men on the road – at least, they were certainly not ghosts. She really ought to turn her horse, she knew. But they did not sound like highwaymen.
Curiosity, magnified by too many weeks cooped up with nothing but tales of adventure, proved impossible to overcome. She cautiously proceeded forward.
She saw them before they caught sight of her approach, so preoccupied were they with the overturned curricle. From what she could see in the dark, it was a very sporting vehicle and she could not for the life of her understand why anyone would drive something so precarious along a country road at night.
“Well, I am certainly lost now, Howe. Cressley is sure to be back at the club this very moment, enjoying his supper and victory. Most likely, thoroughly foxed.” Having uttered this perplexing sentence, the man looked up, straight at Lorelei, who had stopped on the road.
“What’s this!” He straightened at the sight of her, and she could see that he was tall and broad of shoulder. The second man, obviously some sort of retainer, gave a momentary start. “It seems I have roused your ghost after all, Howe. Good night, Lady Ghost.” The cool amusement in his voice left no doubt that he did not for a moment believe her to be an apparition. She got the perplexing notion that his eyes were appreciatively taking in her appearance, but surely such a thing was impossible, not to mention improper!
Lorelei knew a moment of panic at the thought of recognition, before she remembered her veil and the fact that if she could not see the stranger’s features, he would not be able to see hers.
“Perhaps,” she ventured with sass she most definitely did not feel, “it is you, sir, who are the apparition, waiting to lure me to my grave.” Daringly, she drew nearer, the hoof beats a slow and steady rhythm on the empty road.
Alastair Tilbury, the sixth Earl of Winbourne, took in the shape of the woman on the horse. Her face was hidden and he could see little of her figure under the dark cloak she wore. Despite himself, Winbourne was intrigued.
“Ah, but I am not a mysterious apparition on a dark road, merely a hapless traveller with a broken carriage.”
“Well, sir, if you were so foolish as to drive a curricle down a country road at night, I can only say that the fault is entirely yours.” Lorelei could not believe her own ears when she found that she was flirting with the man!
“It was for a wager, my lady Ghost, and it would have been unsporting to refuse it.”
“You are a Corinthian then.”
“Unashamedly, I am.”
The humour in his voice drew her in. “Well, you would be interested to know, perhaps, unless you wish to spend the night guarding your curricle, that there is a village not three miles down the road, and you might ask for horses at the inn, or perhaps lodging. I suppose I ought to offer to take you there on my horse.” It was, she knew, a very fast thing to do – to ride off alone into the night with a strange man, but she sensed no danger from him, despite his unfortunate h
abit of making foolish wagers. It would surely be worse to leave him.
He paused a moment, considering, before nodding quickly. “It seems a very fine solution. Howe, stay here with the horses – I shall send a man from the village. And take care you don’t draw the attention of any other ghosts that might happen this way. They may not be so benevolent.”
The valet took this parting shot with his usual good humour. “Take care, sir.”
Alastair wasted no time flinging himself on the horse behind her, and Lorelei gave a startled gasp as a spicy scent that could only be his assailed her senses at the same time as a strong arm slid around her waist. It was an action that under any other circumstances, in her own identity as Miss Lorelei Lindon, ought to have caused outrage. A gentleman ought never to take such a liberty. But she was not Lorelei Lindon just then, and so she allowed herself to enjoy the unfamiliar sensation.
“Since I am convinced that you are in no way a ghost, my dear apparition, I wonder if you will tell me what you are really doing out on the country road at night?”
“Perhaps you are mistaken to put your trust in me, and I am a ghost, luring you into a cold grave by the wayside?” She would never usually have dared speak thus to any gentleman.
His chuckle rumbled low in his chest and she fought the unexpected urge to lean back into him as she steered Tulip along the road.
“Like a Greek siren? I would tell you, then, that it would be a most delightful way to die.” There was a wicked, tantalising note in his voice. She had never been spoken to in such a way before. It startled her for a moment, as did the accidental connection he’d made with her name. When they were children, Con had had a grand time teasing Lorelei for being named after a wicked kind of water spirit who lured gentlemen to their watery graves with her voice.
“Or… Or perhaps,” Lorelei continued breathlessly, so as to distract him from his current theme, “perhaps I am out hunting ghosts.” There was a note of challenge in her voice.
“That would make you a very singular lady. I am sure none of the fair flock at Almack’s could claim such an achievement as ghost hunting among their virtues.”
Lorelei knew that the exclusive doors of Almack’s would be forever barred to her if anyone ever got wind of her current exploit. The Lady Patronesses of the hallowed social club set very high standards of reputation and behaviour for their guests. There had been instances of poets receiving vouchers when a duke had been refused. She had never set foot within the establishment herself, and was very eager that the situation should be remedied: it was to her the very embodiment of the excitement that was the London Season. They fell into a surprisingly comfortable silence as they cantered down the road, the night quiet around them and the lights of the village twinkling in the distance. The whole situation was so very unexpected that Lorelei could not find it in herself to feel bashful, though she was aware of a strangely pleasant tension at his nearness.
Half a mile from the village, he broke the silence again, his fingers flexing lightly along her ribs. “If you will not tell me your purpose, will you at least give me a name by which to call you?” he teased.
“Why, no, sir I will not. Besides, you have not given me yours.”
“My name? Very well, if that is all you wish of me,” his voice was a caress, “my name is Alistair Tilbury. I am the sixth Earl of Winbourne.”
The name sounded familiar, though nothing concrete came to mind. She supposed she might have heard it mentioned somewhere in passing. Certainly she did not know any earls herself, apart from the Earl of Finley, who was a friend of her father’s and rather elderly. “Well, my lord Winbourne,” she said, drawing the horse to a halt, suddenly sure that remaining in his company was a danger to her, though she was not certain in what way, “this is where I set you down. I cannot go into the village, after all.”
“But how shall I find you again, my elusive siren? For you still owe me your name.”
“By your own words, I am an apparition, sir. And so you cannot ever find me, for I shall fade to nothingness with the first light of day,” she whispered, suddenly knowing that this was very true. In the unlikely event that she ever crossed paths with Alistair Tilbury, she could never reveal herself to be his mysterious ghost. It was a fancy that did not belong in fashionable Society. And there was no chance that ordinary Lorelei Lindon would ever catch the eye of such a man.
The hand that had been resting over her ribs slid up her arm and along her jaw, caressing the sensitive skin beneath her veil, brushing the delicate fabric aside. She could feel his warm breath on her cheek and it sent tingles through her body.
“Then I must steal my kiss before this night is through,” he said in a husky voice, while his other hand grasped her shoulder and pulled her against his chest. Before she could react, he tilted her chin towards him, and then his lips covered hers in a searing kiss that she could feel pulsing through every inch of her trembling body.
Her heart pounded in her ears. Propriety demanded that she pull away, protest, but instead she found herself lost in the sensation, the romance, of the moment. His hand brushed her throat and tangled in her hair, making her shiver. For a second, Lorelei felt a strange tug at her collar, but paid it no attention, so lost was she in the caresses of his sensual mouth. The kiss was over as suddenly as it had begun and he was on the ground beside her, tipping his hat to her politely as if they had met at a picnic in town.
“Well, my lady Ghost, good bye. Until we meet again.”
Turning her mare around, still in a daze, Lorelei set Tulip into a gallop, hoping that the exercise would return some sense into her dazed brain. She did not look back. She knew that to do so would be very dangerous indeed. It was a good thing Tulip knew her way home, because Lorelei could not bring her mind to focus on anything as mundane as directions.
It was not until she was home and undressing, while trying to answer her sister’s eager questions without revealing her strange encounter, that she realised the chain with her mother’s moonstone pendant was gone.
Chapter 2
“It is a lovely colour on you, my dear,” said Lady Hurst, while the modiste draped the pale pink fabric over Lorelei’s shoulders.
“But, Lady Hurst, I am not at all certain I need another gown,” Lorelei protested weakly, though she had to admit that it was a lovely colour.
“Stuff! You father gave express orders that you are to be properly dressed for your first Season, and pale pink is the perfect colour for a girl only just presented. Oh! That reminds me! We must see about your presentation gown.”
They had been in London barely two weeks, staying with Lady Hurst in her fashionable townhouse in Russell Square, and in the two weeks since their arrival in the metropolis, the Lindon girls had hardly had a moment to themselves. Lady Hurst had declared their country establishment unbearably dreary, just as she had expected. Having no love for the country, she had wasted no time whisking the girls away to London to re-join civilised society and take part in numerous entertainments. She had been so kind as to permit Lorelei to bring Sirius: any separation was entirely unthinkable. The dog had wasted no time making himself comfortable in his new London establishment, quickly winning over the kitchen staff – once they’d grown accustomed to the Newfoundland’s fearsome size.
Constance had been right: there was always something to do in London. There were plays to attend, dresses to order and places of interest to visit. Constance had expressed many times her envy that Lorelei was to be presented, sighing that her own turn could not come soon enough.
In the midst of all this flurry, Lorelei still found the time to think about her encounter with the Earl of Winbourne. He had stolen her beloved pendant, she was sure of it. She had made Constance walk down to the village with her the following morning so that she might scan the ground for it, but had discovered no trace of the necklace. She knew she had to recover it somehow, that she had to have it back at all costs, but she could not think how she might achieve this without somehow re
vealing her identity or compromising her reputation. She had not told anyone of their meeting and she had not seen hide nor hair of the man in the two weeks she had already spent in London, though she had certainly been on the look-out for the handsome Corinthian. Lorelei dared not enquire after him of Lady Hurst, knowing that doing so was bound to raise questions.
She had fruitlessly looked for him in parks and at the theatre, she had scanned the Society journals for his name… all to no avail. To be perfectly fair, she was not entirely sure what the man looked like. She knew he had broad shoulders and strong hands, and a voice that made her shiver. She knew the taste of his kiss and that his hair was blond and he was taller than she, but none of that was quite enough to identify him in a crowd of tall, fair gentlemen. This did not stop her from trying, surreptitiously, as she stole quick glances, careful that she should not be caught at it. She was sure that her heart would know him instantly, even if her eyes did not.
“Lorelei? My dear, are you listening?” Lady Hurst asked with some concern. She did not believe that too much introspection was good for young girls who hoped to strike a suitable match on the marriage mart, and she found that Lorelei had been somewhat absent-minded of late. “This may seem a trifle to you and no wonder, for you are very young, but nothing is as important as one’s wardrobe if one wishes to cut a dash about town!”
“I’m sorry, Lady Hurst. I was thinking of a suitable cap to match the dress,” Lorelei prevaricated, carefully not looking the older woman in the eye.
The Scoundrel's Secret Siren Page 2