Page 45 of The Viscount and the Vicar’s Daughter

Lady Hermione’s cold expression was almost militant. “If I have anything to say about it they will.” At that, she summoned a footman and ordered tea. “We must make a plan,” she said when the servant had departed.

“It will take some delicacy,” Lord Lynden said.

Lady Hermione scoffed. “It will take boldness,” she retorted. “And plain speaking.” One of her pugs leapt onto the settee beside her. It circled round twice before curling up against an embroidered pillow. She rested a hand on its back. “You realize she will have to stay here?”

Lord Lynden inclined his head.

“And her association with you will have to end. Your own reputation is impeccable, my lord, but your son’s reputation is another matter. We must take care that St. Ashton’s name is not connected to this business. It would be ruinous at this stage and well you know it.”

Valentine looked between the two of them. They were discussing her as if she were not even there. “I beg your pardon, ma’am,” she began.

“Miss March,” Lord Lynden warned.

She didn’t heed him. “Lord St. Ashton is very much connected to this business. The two of us are engaged to be married.”

Lady Hermione’s gray eyes became positively glacial. They shot to Lord Lynden in accusation. “Is this true?”

He sighed. “Nothing has been formalized.”

“In other words, this is another false promise of St. Ashton’s. Made after a seduction, no doubt.” She stood. “Well, my lord, this explains all.”

Valentine opened her mouth to object, but Lord Lynden silenced her with a look.

“Now, Hermione—” he said.

“Don’t dare patronize me, sir.” She strode across the drawing room, her pugs trotting in her wake. Valentine feared she might storm out, never to be seen again, but Lady Hermione merely walked to an inlaid chest in the corner. She opened the topmost drawer and retrieved something from within. She stared down at it a moment.

“I have been accustomed to keeping this in my room,” she said. “I brought it down this morning in anticipation of your arrival.”

Valentine assumed she was speaking to Lord Lynden again, but when Lady Hermione returned to them, she didn’t look at the earl. Instead, she sank down on the velvet-tufted sofa beside her. She smelled of lavender and herbal soap. It was a surprisingly reassuring fragrance.

“It was painted that last summer,” she said. “Before the old marquess threw her to the wolves. I was away on the continent. By the time I returned to England, she was gone. Dead, they told me. Her and her child.”

Valentine’s gaze fell to Lady Hermione’s outstretched hand. In the center of her palm she held a small framed portrait.

“Take it,” Lady Hermione said. “It’s yours now.”

Valentine lifted the miniature from Lady’s Hermione’s hand with trembling fingers. It was a portrait of a young lady, painted in watercolor on ivory. A beautiful young lady with flaxen hair and wide, solemn gray eyes in a heart-shaped face.

“She was nineteen,” Lady Hermione said matter-of-factly.

Valentine’s throat tightened with emotion. “Oh,” she whispered. She could think of nothing else to say. Her brain had transformed into porridge, her heart into a swollen lump in her chest. She swallowed back a swell of tears.

This, then, was the infamous Lady Sara Caddington. The shadowy, unknowable figure she’d dreamed of since she was first old enough to dream. Not a fallen woman or a wanton, but a girl. Just a girl.

“My mother,” she said softly.

“Your mother,” Lady Hermione concurred. “Now tell me—Miss March, is it?—exactly how big is this scandal of yours with St. Ashton? And when may we expect news of it to reach London?”

“Bloody blasted hell.”

“Mind the mud puddle, my lord,” Musgrove said.

Tristan shot his secretary a murderous glare. The puddle was, in fact, a several-foot-deep pit of thick black sludge, which now threatened to suck him under, feet first. He muttered another blistering oath as he attempted to extricate himself. He’d already ruined one pair of boots during the course of this visit. He’d be damned if he ruined another.

“Why the devil is everything so wet?” he demanded. “It hasn’t rained in four days.”

“That would be the poor drainage in the north pasture, sir. I mentioned it in my report.”