Read Online Something Sinful by Suzanne Enoch - Free Book Online Page B

at the east end of Rotten Row half an hour later, Sarala fairly vibrated with eagerness to begin the morning’s negotiations. She barely kept from smiling as Lord Charlemagne’s barouche came into view standing amid a small crowd of other vehicles. Apparently he was as popular out-of-doors as he was beneath ballroom chandelier lights. Today the majority of the moths attracted to his flame seemed to be female—but then the titled men would be in Parliament.
    “Wonderful,” she muttered, pulling her cloak closer around her shoulders. In the middle of a gathering like that, she certainly couldn’t simply walk up to him. Nor could she mention anything about his so-called gift and what he could do with it.
    “My lady,” Jenny said, “you’re shivering. We should go back to the house before you catch a chill.”
    Given their surroundings and the number of witnesses, they probably should. Now that she considered it, Charlemagne had probably chosen the setting just so she wouldn’t dare return the ruby. On the other hand, she’d wasted a good portion of the morning walking out to the park. And besides, she wasn’t so easily thwarted.
    She would watch him interacting with his admirers, and she would observe. Everyone had a weakness, and he’d probably used the ruby to look for hers. She needed to find his before time and her family’s need to repay debts wore her down to his insulting price. “We’ll go in a few minutes,” she returned, seeing the maid eyeing her.
    Jenny looked from her to the center of the crowd of vehicles. “Begging your pardon, but ain’t that the gentleman who tried to jump into the coach the other day? The one you sent away from the house before your parents should see him? Lord Champagne?”
    “Charlemagne,” she corrected. “Named after the famous king of most of Western Europe. And he certainly behaves like royalty, doesn’t he?”
    “Well, I’d say he’s handsome as anything. But you said he was mad.”
    She’d actually meant mad as in angry yesterday, but the other fit today. “He may well be.” She looked at him again, more closely this time. Yes, he was handsome; previously she’d been so concerned with his information and then his offers that she hadn’t just…seen him.
    They stood watching at the edge of the trees for several minutes. Lord Charlemagne had an engaging smile, even when he wasn’t using it to try to gain an advantage in negotiations. He did seem to have a gift that she lacked for being endlessly charming in the face of silliness, but then he would have had more occasion to use it and more reason to practice it than she did.
    After five minutes or so she turned her attention to the females—and the far smaller number of men—who surrounded her eleven o’clock appointment. Pretty, twittery young things in well-appointed carriages—posies seeking money or a title through matrimony, she supposed. The men as a whole and with the notable exception of Charlemagne appeared somewhat shabbier, but then they most likely hoped to improve their circumstances by association, or at worst by marrying one of Charlemagne’s cast-offs.
    When she looked back at the reason for all the chaos, she found gray eyes gazing squarely at her. Damnation. Now she couldn’t leave without looking as though she were intimidated or jealous, and she still couldn’t approach without appearing to be one of the hopeful female throng.
    At that moment, however, he said something she couldn’t hear. Almost immediately the mass of horses and vehicles parted before his carriage and then began to disperse. In another second or two his barouche pulled up beside her.
    “Lady Sarala. Good morning,” he said with that charming smile of his, and tipped his hat.
    “Lord Moses. And I thought the parting of the Red Sea was an allegory.”
    He lifted an eyebrow, then glanced back over his shoulder. “Oh, that. They aren’t as persistent as the Egyptian army, though considerably more deadly to my