Read Online A Tale of Two Lovers by Maya Rodale - Free Book Online Page B

those forty years, he (for it was a he) had assembled a network of informants so vast, so disperse, and so efficient that little happened that did not come to his attention. He relied on servants placed in all the best houses, shopkeepers, waiters at coffeehouses, and orphaned brats on the streets trading gossip for a penny-a-line.
    If a lady in Mayfair had a sneezing fit, he might wonder—in print—if she was consumptive. If a maid were ferrying secret love letters between a young lady and a forbidden paramour, the Man About Town would quote them. If a devilish lord were packing for a jaunt to Gretna, he wouldn’t get outside London proper before The London Times printed the details, particularly the man’s traveling companion. And if a footman should encounter a couple in a delicate position at a ball at midnight, it would be news by morning.
    But it was the willingness of the ton to tattle on itself that never failed to amaze or amuse. Like the best hostesses, he kept calling hours. One could find the Man About Town at St. Bride’s Church every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon.
    This church was a particularly fitting destination for a gossip columnist’s calling hours. Located on Fleet Street, it was known as the Church of the Press. It was the final resting place of novelists and poets.
    The process of calling hours was simple. He wore a hooded cloak that obscured his face. He knelt at the altar as if in prayer, while his callers took their turn “praying” next to him, while really whispering all sorts of secrets. It was more like confession, actually.
    Occasionally attempts were made to pull away his hood, and those were easily thwarted. Usually, however, people did not want to ruin the mystery.
    It was here that Jocelyn Kemble found him and related her story. The hooded cloak concealed his expression, which was one of warring emotions: satisfaction to know the identity of Roxbury’s scandalous backstage paramour and displeasure at who it was.
    Nevertheless, the next morning, it appeared in print.

Chapter 10
     
    T hat morning, Jocelyn’s exposé in the Man About Town’s column had hit the newsstands and breakfast tables all over London. At a ball that evening, Julianna was still seething. In the ballroom, she chatted briefly with Sophie and Brandon, then Lord Brookes, Lady Walmsly, and half a dozen others. All anyone wished to talk about was the Roxbury scandal, as it was being called.
    All the while, Julianna glanced suspiciously from one elder gentleman to the next. One of them had to be the Man About Town, and she wished to vent her anger at him because of the trouble he caused her lately.
    She ventured into the card room and sipped champagne and watched a high-stakes game progress. It was there that Roxbury found her and requested a waltz. The nerve. The audacity. That charming smile of his, tempting her to say yes and daring her to refuse.
    Another woman might coyly murmur yes, with batting eyelashes and a simpering smile. She could never.
    Music from the orchestra playing in the ballroom filtered in. The air was thick with smoke of men’s cigars. The conversations were kept to a low hum as fortunes were won and lost at the turn of a card. Julianna took another sip of her drink and tried to ignore him, but he asked her again.
    “You are demented if you think I will,” she replied, after tossing him a sidelong glance and then dismissively looking away. She was too angry to look directly at him after that story in The Times this morning. Besides, she already knew about his velvety brown eyes, and slanting cheekbones, and his mouth—and that the women were right when they said it was made for kissing.
    Jocelyn Kemble spilled everything to the Man About Town, and Julianna had no doubt that Roxbury was behind it. It glorified Roxbury’s prowess as a lover with a level of detail nearly unfit to print. It mentioned an interruption from another couple—a spinster and a dandy—which made Julianna’s color