Read Online The Secret Lover by Julia London - Free Book Online

there, standing with no tongue! Do you not
see
?"
    "Oh, I see all right, and I know
exactly
what he must be thinking now!"
    "He thinks you are very pretty."
    "Don't be ridiculous!" she retorted sharply. Her head was reeling, spinning—she moved forward, purposely ignoring Honorine as she marched from the orangery.
    "It is not I who am ridiculous, Sofia!" Honorine snapped right back, and was quickly on her heels. "This fear you have, it is…
mon Dieu
! How do you say in English?
Injustifié
!"
    "And exactly
what
brought Mr. Hamilton to the orangery?" Sophie demanded, stopping and turning so abruptly that Honorine almost collided with her.
    "The boy! Never mind of this! Do you see Monsieur Hamilton, how he smiles for you?"
    With a snort of exasperation, Sophie whirled about and picked up her pace, unwilling to listen to Honorine as she began, for the thousandth time, the litany of attributes Sophie possessed, concluding that if only she would smile, hold her head up, look a man in the eye… Blast it, but it was enough to drive a woman to drink!
    Which is exactly what she did, marching into the grand salon and helping herself to a spot of port to calm her nerves, putting aside, for the time being, that she could hardly swallow the stuff. But then again, it had been a rather extraordinary day for Sophie Dane—two men, two
complete
disasters, and one of them being Trevor Hamilton, of all people.
Trevor
Hamilton
! In the summer of thirty-six there wasn't a single debutante who didn't hope to dance a waltz with him, didn't dream of making a match with him! Of all the people for her to happen upon now, of all the persons in the world, it had to be
him
. What a bloody disaster!
    Unfortunately, Honorine would not let her forget it, and was obviously intent on driving her quite mad, as she continued well into the evening, ranting about Mr. Hamilton, Sophie's lack of male companionship in general, and her obvious need to…
ahem
… tend to
all
her needs. By the middle of the next morning, Sophie was imagining all the inventive ways she might strangle her. To make matters worse, Honorine went to Regent's Park on a lark and accosted the little moppet son of Hamilton's, along with his governess, after a walkabout with the boy's grandpapa.
    Somehow, Honorine had managed to convince reasonable adults that the boy should call at
Maison de Fortier
. Lord Hamilton was, apparently, quite smitten with Honorine.
    And Honorine decided, much to Sophie's annoyance, to teach young Ian to dance. She coerced Roland—who happened to be a passable violinist and, having no other apparent occupation in London, was available—into playing. Young Ian proved to be an eager and capable little dancer, in spite of his governess's attempts to tell him that one did not dance
precisely
that way in England.
    Fortunately for his governess, Miss Hipplewhite, Honorine soon grew bored of dancing with a seven-year-old boy, and sprawled on a settee, regaled Ian with outrageously creative stories of her life. Ian lay on his stomach on the Oriental rug, his chin propped on his fists, his eyes wide with awe at some of the more colorful tales presented him.
    Miss Hipplewhite sat on the edge of her chair, her mouth agape in horror.
    Sophie could hardly keep from rolling her eyes or muttering her disbelief of the more inventive tales, particularly the one that had Honorine rescuing a child from some sort of Norwegian pirate-viking.
    Sophie's demeanor, however, did not sit well with her employer. When Honorine suggested, in proper and distinct French, that she might perhaps find another activity more to her liking than drumming her fingers on the arm of her chair and muttering under her breath, Sophie could not agree more.
    She set out for her daily walk and found herself in Regent's Park.
    Inevitably, she came to the pond she visited every day, in spite of having already made a monumental fool of herself there. She paused at the wrought iron bench where she usually sat and