Scandalous Innocent Read Free Page B

wading knee-deep in the brilliance of her new position, for all the rooms into which she led them, while pointing out the newest acquisitions, blazed with gilt and shone with marble. There were polished wood and crimson curtains, fringed cushions and fat tassels everywhere hanging from ropes of satin, cherubs, cornucopia, lacquered cabinets, obscene caryatids holding up ornate tables, gilded mirrors, picture frames and portraits by the score, flowery plasterwork ceilings, heavily patterned curtains hiding painted gold-knobbed shutters, knobs, scrolls, barley-sugar legs and velvet seats with yet more braid. She must have bought the stuff by the mile, Phoebe thought, imagining the poor upholsterers buried under mountains of it, crying out for air and plain surfaces.
    The Duke and Duchess were examining the inside of a cabinet when a whisper at Phoebe’s shoulder reminded her, ‘You must say you like it, you know. It gets worse… er…better.’
    Quickly, she turned to find the voice that had spoken her thoughts out loud, stopping the answering smile before it could show in her eyes, before he could think he was to be rewarded by even the smallest token. The chill in her voice was already there. ‘Don’t waste your precious time talking to me, sir,’ she remarked sharply under her breath. ‘If I’d known you’d be here, I would have stayed at home to tend my gentlewoman.’ She would like to have rejoined her hosts as they strolled away into the hall, but Sir Leo was in the way and, as her eyes signalled her intention, he moved aside to stop her.
    ‘What, and miss all this?’ he whispered, unsmiling. ‘You may not wish to see me here, Mistress Laker, but after three years I think it’s time to put matters straight between us, don’t you?’
    Her eyes blazed with dark fury. ‘I don’t wish to see you anywhere, sir, and matters are as straight as they’ll ever be. Disapproval and dislike on your part, pure hatred on mine. There. What could be straighter than that?’
    ‘It cannot continue, even if it were true that I dislike you. As it happens, I don’t.’
    ‘Sir Leo, I really do not care in the slightest whether you do or not. All I know is that I do not wish to be reminded of what happened, when I’ve spent the last three years trying to forget. The duel you fought was not to defend my honour but your own, and the result of that debacle was the loss of a good man’s life, directly or indirectly, depending on whose side you’re on. If you think three years is enough to erase the memory of that tragedy, then you know less about women than you claim to.’
    ‘Then it’s up to me to convince you, isn’t it?’
    Like quicksilver, she dodged round him, arching her body to evade his arm, running to the doorway through which voices floated. Her silk skirts crackled angrily. ‘Find something more rewarding to do,’ she said, ‘and leave me alone.’
    He let her go. ‘That, Mistress Phoebe Laker, is something I shall not be doing, whatever your wishes,’ he murmured, sauntering after her.

    It was not quite so difficult for Phoebe to admire her beautiful yellow bedroom upstairs on the first floor when the sun had begun to slant across the satin-covered walls, flooding the yellow-curtained bed with light. Conveniently placed at the top of the staircase, two smaller rooms snuggled next to hers in the angle of the south front where her maid Constance had been given a small bed, to be near her mistress.
    ‘Now this is completely new,’ said the Duchess, sliding a heavily ringed hand over the marquetry lid of a writing desk. ‘And the tapestries came originally from the Mortlake factory when it was still in full production, but I may move them yet. A good price they were, too.’
    Fortunately, Phoebe was not obliged to comment, for the Duchess had seen from the window that more coaches were rolling down the long drive, and she was quite suddenly abandoned. The last time she had seen Ham House was when it was