Vixen in Velvet by Loretta Chase Page A

another fellow to intrigue while she set about picking his pockets?
    Swanton took up one of the pincushions that had stabbed Lisburne to the heart.
    “That’s Bridget Coppy’s work,” Lisburne said. “Miss Noirot says the heart shape is traditional for pincushions. But instead of the usual red, the girl exercised her imagination and made it in white with a coral trim, to set off the colorful flowers. The cord attaches to the waist.”
    “The flowers are charming,” Swanton said. “So delicate.”
    “Bridget is becoming a skilled embroiderer,” Lisburne said.
    “My mother would like this,” Swanton said.
    “Then by all means let us deliver it in person. I see gifts aplenty here for my mother as well. And her new husband. They would both be enchanted.”
    His mother had chosen her second husband as wisely as she’d done her first. Lord Rufford was a good, generous man, who made her happy. He’d made a friend of his stepson, too, no easy feat.
    “You’re in a devil of a hurry to return,” Swanton said.
    Lisburne laughed. “Perhaps I am. I’m supposed to be such a cosmopolitan fellow, yet I let a redheaded French milliner get the better of me. Perhaps I want to slink away in shame.”
    “That I beg leave to doubt,” Swanton said. “I believe you’re so far from wishing to leave that you’re even now puzzling over how she did it, so that you can plan how to prevail at your next encounter.”
    Lisburne looked at him.
    “She’s the only woman you’ve taken any particular notice of since we came to London,” Swanton said. “And I know you. As well, that is, as anybody can know you.”
    “As though there were anything of great moment to know,” Lisburne said. But Swanton was a poet. He imagined everybody had hidden depths. If Lisburne did have them, he wasn’t interested in exploring them, and he certainly wouldn’t encourage anybody else to do so. “What about you? Do you feel compelled to stay?”
    “I feel I must,” Swanton said.
    “Do you? I’d as soon be stalked by wolves as by a lot of gently bred maidens.”
    “They’ll grow sick of me soon enough,” Swanton said. “In the meantime, I should be a coward to run away when I can do so much good. It would be unworthy of your father’s memory, in any event.”
    “Yes, yes, stab me with my father, do,” Lisburne said.
    “I know it isn’t fair, but it’s the only way I know to win an argument with you,” Swanton said.
    “Very well,” Lisburne said. “We stay until they turn on you. Then we pray we can get away in time.”
    He glanced at the piles of correspondence he’d flung onto one of the library’s sofas a short time earlier. “Meanwhile, does your secretary need a secretary? The heaps of letters have only grown higher since yesterday.” Remembering what Swanton had said moments ago, he added, “Begging letters, you said. One of the perils of rank and wealth. Everybody puts his hand out, and somebody has to decide who’s deserving and who isn’t.”
    “That’s the least of it,” Swanton said. “Today alone I received two claims for child support and one extortionate note threatening a breach of promise suit.”
    To anybody who knew Swanton, the claims were absurd. Yet they oughtn’t to be taken lightly.
    Fame aroused envy and greed and, generally, the worst instincts of some people. Too many would be willing to believe ill of him.
    “Show me the letters,” Lisburne said.
    Evening of Tuesday 14 July
    H ad Lisburne not been so deeply engrossed in his cousin’s unpleasant correspondence, he might have got wind of the other matter sooner. Or maybe not.
    Though he’d been to White’s often enough, he hadn’t looked into the betting book in days. Why bother? So many of the wagers were witless, arising from boredom. How long a fly would crawl about the window before it died or flew away, for instance.
    Lisburne, for the present at least, wasn’t bored. Watching women moon about Swanton had been tiresome, and even the