The Wish Club by Stella Cameron

Author:Stella Cameron [CAMERON, STELLA]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: FIC027050
ISBN: 9780759522015
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2001-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

“He went directly to her, I tell you,” Hermoine told the countess and Horace. Really, this was too, too embarrassing. “She must be removed. I don’t care how, but she must be removed.”

“How can you be sure where he went?” Horace asked, extracting a pinch of snuff from a box he liked to say was a gift from a royal admirer. He “couldn’t disclose the identity of the elevated personage.” He sniffed the snuff delicately.

“Leave her alone, Horace,” the countess said. “She’s distressed, poor girl. Give her time to explain what went wrong.”

“Nothing that was any fault of mine,” Hermoine wailed, throwing herself down on a divan in the countess’s parlor. “He . . . He . . . Oh, it’s too much. No, too, little. Oh, I hardly know how to contain myself at all.”

Horace came to lean over the end of the divan where he studied her upside down. “Well then,” he said, “don’t contain yourself, love. I’ve always thought you were particularly sumptuous when not contained.”

“Stop it,” she told him petulantly. She wished he would go away—completely away again, and stay away this time.

“Let me remove your containers, my love. You are obviously weak from your exertions and should be cared for by one who really appreciates your talents.”

She ignored him.

“Tell us what happened again,” he said. “You thought he was mad for you, but . . . What exactly did happen then? You were vague.”

“He’s sick. He’s obsessed with rutting the little peasant. Assistant? What kind of pathetic excuse for her presence can that be? He’s acting out some sort of sick fantasy, I tell you. She’s a poor, helpless child, and he’s having his way with her.”

“Sounds to me as if you should be sorry for her,” Horace said. He’d removed his watch and began to trail the chain over the swell of Hermoine’s breasts.

“Sorry?” she said. “I don’t give a fig about her. You said we would get what we want and that your plan would work. We should be impossibly rich by now.”

“We have to have the journal,” the countess said, breaking her long, pensive silence. “Our friends are becoming restless. Too restless. I am receiving the kind of threats no lady should have to receive. I say it’s time to make our move.”

Horace held up a hand. “Not so quickly, dear Gertrude. Haste can ruin everything. Allow me to set the pace, if you please.” With that he pressed his lips to Hermoine’s brow, and whispered, “You and I must talk.”

She drew back from pushing him away and looked up at him until her eyes crossed and she blinked. “What about?” she asked softly.

“A pie cut in two parts fills two stomachs so much more than a pie cut in three fills three stomachs, especially when one of those three stomachs expects to take a larger portion—much larger.”

He wanted to cut the countess out. The idea both frightened and delighted Hermoine. The countess was capable of anything if she was crossed.

“Stop whispering,” Countess Grabham demanded.

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