The Scoundrel's Secret Siren Read Free Page A

black riding habit, hat and veil, with the silver of her mother’s moonstone pendant against the pale skin the only colour on her person.
    “Oh, Lorelei, this is not right!” Constance whispered urgently, coming closer to her sister. She had come out to keep watch and her apprehension has been growing steadily since Lorelei h ad put on her riding dress. “What if there really is a ghost? I think you ought not to go!”
    Lorelei, patted her sister’s arm. “I am not afraid of the ghost. And I won’t give it up and go back inside either. Don’t fret, Con! I won’t be very long!” with those confident words, the young woman squeezed at the sides of her horse and took off into the night.
    *
    Lorelei thought that the ladylike reaction would have been to become frightened by the silence and the gloom, and hurry back home. A lady would even have learned not to be quite so fast in the future. But she found that she did not mind the dark – it made ghost hunting more exciting. She carefully picked her path along the carriage track which led away from the estate until, at last, she stood on a stretch of road not far from where the carriage had apparently turned over all those decades ago, under a towering old oak. She was fully prepared to feel a chill or hear whispers or weeping. Lorelei waited in quiet anticipation. It was very quiet, but she did not see anything remotely ghostly, and felt rather disappointed. She was about to resignedly turn Tulip back in the direction of the manor. Suddenly, Lorelei heard voices.
    “The devil confound it!” a masculine voice swore. It was a low and cultured voice despite its obvious vexation.
    “They said down in the village that this road is haunted, my lord,” a second masculine voice said, with a curious mixture of politeness and amusement.
    “And I suppose you’re warning me not to wake the spirits with my own wrath, Howe .” The low velvet chuckle sent a shiver down Lorelei’s spine, but she ignored this strange reaction. Men! She realised there were men on the road – at least, they were certainly not ghosts. She really ought to turn her horse, she knew. But they did not sound like highwaymen.
    Curiosity, magnified by too many weeks cooped up with nothing but tales of adventure, proved impossible to overcome. She cautiously proceeded forward.
    She saw them before they caught sight of her approach, so preoccupied were they with the overturned curricle. From what she could see in the dark, it was a very sporting vehicle and she could not for the life of her understand why anyone would drive something so precarious along a country road at night.
    “Well, I am certainly lost now, Howe. Cressley is sure to be back at the club this very moment, enjoying his supper and victory. Most likely, thoroughly foxed.” Having uttered this perplexing sentence, the man looked up, straight at Lorelei, who had stopped on the road.
    “What’s this!” He straightened at the sight of her, and she could see that he was tall and broad of shoulder. The second man, obviously some sort of retainer, gave a momentary start. “It seems I have roused your ghost after all, Howe. Good night, Lady Ghost.” The cool amusement in his voice left no doubt that he did not for a moment believe her to be an apparition. She got the perplexing notion that his eyes were appreciatively taking in her appearance, but surely such a thing was impossible, not to mention improper!
    Lorelei knew a moment of panic at the thought o f recognition, before she remembered her veil and the fact that if she could not see the stranger’s features, he would not be able to see hers.
    “Perhaps,” she ventured with sass she most definitely did not feel, “it is you, sir, who are the apparition, waiting to lure me to my grave.” Daringly, she drew nearer, the hoof beats a slow and steady rhythm on the empty road.
    Alastair Tilbury, the sixth Earl of Winbourne, took in the shape of the woman on the horse. Her face was hidden