Page 61 of How to Start a Scandal

The wonderful clean scent of him surrounded her, the same as it had the previous night. She’d fallen asleep with that scent clinging to her skin.

‘Do you think the ribbons might be too much?’ Seth asked discreetly.

Violet startled and glanced at her gown where a narrow line of ribbon ran along the seam.

‘I don’t mean you,’ he whispered and looked pointedly at Hedgehog, who skulked forward on his lead with several ribbons trailing after him from his hat.

Violet smothered a laugh behind her hand. ‘It may be a bit much,’ she conceded quietly.

Seth winked at her. ‘You know I have to ask something of a personal nature.’

‘A personal nature?’ Violet glanced behind her to ensure Susan and Felicity were out of earshot. As the maid had promised, they were. In fact, it would be easy to imagine Violet and Seth were alone were it not for the cat on a lead trotting a foot in front of them.

‘Yes.’ Seth regarded her and the skin around his eyes tightened somewhat. ‘I want to know a little more about the Lady Observer.’

Violet’s blood chilled. All this time she had been worried he would discover she was no longer a virgin. Never once had she suspected he might realise she was the Lady Observer. It hit her like a hammer and left her reeling.

Chapter Seventeen

Seth had hoped he appeared more nonchalant than he felt. Her agreement to allow his courtship had left him elated. And anxious. She made him want to be better—to be the courageous war hero society expected of him, to be stronger than the tidal wave of memories on the battlefield.

The combination of it all left him far more nervous around her than he’d ever been before. As it was, his question about the Lady Observer was most likely ridiculous. After all, what man actually bothered to read such drivel?

‘The Lady Observer?’ Violet said in a strangely choked voice. ‘Do you mean the...scandal column in the Society Journal?’

Dear Lord, was she laughing at him?

He inwardly winced. He was as bad as Rawley at this moment.

‘I do.’ He tried to catch a glance of her face beneath the brim of her straw bonnet. Without success.

He did, however, immediately recognise the bonnet.

It was the same one she’d worn that day in the garden when they’d first kissed. When he’d pulled free the silk ribbon and let it slide from her hair. When he’d sampled the sweetness of her lips.

The garden had been his favourite place when he’d been a boy, a reprieve from the stuffy doldrums of the house where the rules were heavy and freedom was practically non-existent. As an adult, it was swiftly becoming a favourite place yet again, for a series of very different, very tantalising reasons.

They followed the trail of people walking into Hyde Park from Grosvenor Gate. Shade from the large walnut trees blotted out the late afternoon sun momentarily as they strode on.

‘What about the Lady Observer?’ Violet asked.

‘It is your preferred gossip column, is it not?’ He knew it was, of course, but hoped his aloofness might come off more masculine than his bumbling start to the topic.

Why the devil had he brought it up in the first place?

He knew why. It had been an attempt to find some ground for conversation between them. Between his nerves about finally courting Violet and the intense vulnerability he’d displayed with her the night before, he’d been afraid his mind would go blank.

‘Do you feel the scandals reported within are...well...somewhat deficient?’ God, he was sounding like a ninny now. The idea to bring up the topic had seemed like such a good one earlier when he’d tried to think of ways to impress her. Speaking about it aloud now made him realise how foolish a topic it truly was.

‘Why would you possibly say such a thing?’ There was a sharp note to her tone, as if he’d offended her.

He was botching this into a proper mess.

‘Do you not think it’s odd that she has not reported a thing about our interactions?’ He tilted his head. ‘It appears my mother reads Ladies and Notions and they wrote quite the article on the amount of time we were missing from the soirée when we were on the veranda last night.’

‘Surely the author of every gossip column cannot see everything,’ Violet offered.

‘Then perhaps it is a good thing she could not see us in your garden,’ he whispered.