The Trouble With Seduction. Victoria Hanlen

rolled her cigar between her fingers. “It has come to my attention that perhaps someone connected to Edward’s accident was at your party a few weeks ago. Would it be possible for you to make a list of all present? And could you please include the servants and anyone else who might have arrived late, guest or not.”

      “Oh, my, Sarah! Whom do you suspect?”

      “I’m not sure. It’s for an acquaintance who thought they briefly saw someone there.”

      Amelia’s face lit up. “This is all so mysterious. Who is this acquaintance?”

      Sarah bit her lower lip and tasted rich Cuban tobacco. Yesterday’s image of Mr Ravenhill in his revealing work smock appeared in her mind. She probably should have nothing more to do with him. Handsome males always brought trouble. The very first boy she’d admired teased her into breaking her leg. Its weakness would probably forever plague her.

      She shouldn’t reveal he was the one who wanted the list, but she hated lying, and especially to her friends. “This acquaintance believes they have found a connection between the fire that killed Edward and the men who attacked… him.”

      “It’s Mr Ravenhill!” Amelia clapped excitedly.

      Calista’s dimple twitched, and she shoved her cigar into her mouth.

      Sarah wanted to make herself very small and slink away. This was exactly what she’d been afraid of, and these were her friends. She and Ravenhill were such a chestnut – a wealthy widow befriending a handsome rake, the younger son of a peer. “You purposely misunderstand the situation. There is nothing between us and that is the way it will stay.”

      Amelia took a sip of her lemonade and licked her lips in an apparent attempt to keep them from quivering. “I’m sorry. We make light, but we know the situation is dire. There are dangerous villains afoot who are up to very serious business. I will put the list together as soon as I get home and ask my housekeeper to help.”

      Calista squinted against the smoke trailing from the end of her cigar as she expertly shuffled the cards, dealt and then tapped off her ash. “So where should we go to get your mind off your troubles?”

      “I fear I’m not familiar with the city’s entertainments.” Sarah retrieved the fluffy fan hanging from the back of her chair and gave it a few flicks. “Aunt Eliza has only recently managed to entice me outdoors. This renovation has sprung unwelcome surprises at every turn.”

      Amelia gave Sarah a sympathetic look. “I can understand your annoyance and distress. Grancliffe Hall has resisted even the most minor sprucing and mounts an outright rebellion whenever we try to modernize.”

      “Old houses can be so cranky.” Calista wrinkled her nose and scowled in an imitation of an old crone. “I say it’s high time we found somewhere worthy to sally forth and shake our taffeta.” She took another puff on her cigar and blew smoke rings into the air.

      Sarah watched the wispy wheels of smoke issue from her mouth. “I must learn to do that, once I master smoking these things.” It was refreshing to meet someone so uninhibited. This outlandish young woman liberated her, made her forget the suffocating proprieties.

      As a childless widow, Sarah now inhabited a nebulous, ill-defined category. Though no longer a green girl, the conservative rules of decorum taught at her father’s knee still clung tenaciously. She was not one to fight cultural mores and fitting in did not come easily. It was far simpler to avoid people and situations that made her or others uncomfortable.

      Calista occupied a vague social category as well – perhaps this was the reason Sarah felt immediate kinship. As a wealthy heiress from New York, Calista had been sent to live with her cousin Amelia’s family under a shroud of speculation. Rumors and newspaper articles had followed her, whispering stories of improprieties and an unbalanced personality. All she’d witnessed was a very bright, lively, somewhat lost young woman, trying to make the most of her situation.

      “Shall we go to the opera? Il Trovatore is due to open soon.” Amelia picked up her cards and studied them. “There’s plenty of room in the Grancliffe box. Would you like to go?”

      Outside the enclosure of foliage, footsteps crunched along the gravel walkway approaching their tree. In due course, Megpeas announced from beyond the branches, “My lady, there is a gentleman here to see you. Are you at home?”

      She turned toward her butler’s voice. Her head gave a little spin. “Who is it?”

      “Mr Ravenhill, my lady.”

      Out of the corner of her eye, she caught an exchange of fluttering lashes between Amelia and Calista. Sarah took another gulp of lemonade. “Would you ladies care for a fourth in the game?”

      Amelia smiled like the cat that got the cream. “Mr Ravenhill? What a surprise!”

      Sarah’s face suddenly burned. “Should I invite him to play? Cards, I mean.”

      Amelia and Calista looked to each other and chorused a little too readily, “Yes!”

      The surge in Sarah’s pulse made her hand tremble and she nearly dropped her cigar. “Megpeas, please give us a moment before you bring him back.”

      Even though Sarah had smoked and drank enough fortified lemonade to have acquired a pleasant buzzing sensation, the thought of strapping, arousing Mr Ravenhill, the first man who’d ever proposed she enter with him into a discreet alliance, made her insides bounce handsprings. She thrust her cigar at Calista and jumped to her feet to frantically fan away the smoke.

      ***

      Damen followed Megpeas down a path to the far side of the mansion away from the burned laboratory. The spring sunshine did not improve the view. All around them lay a veritable battlefield of ruined flowerbeds, piles of rock, lumber and rubble.

      Megpeas stopped at the edge of a little garden in front of a mammoth weeping beech tree – one of the lone survivors of the wreckage.

      Damen had seen similar specimens, though perhaps not so robust. Its abundant canopy sagged, allowing its branches to sweep gracefully to the ground, no doubt making a leafy grotto inside.

      “My lady, Mr Ravenhill is here to see you,” Megpeas announced.

      “Please come in.” Sarah’s voice sounded a little breathy as it cut through the tree’s heavy foliage.