Secrets and Lords by Justine Elyot

Author:Justine Elyot
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), General, Romance, Historical, Erotica, Fiction
ISBN: 9780007532346
Publisher: Mischief
Published: 2013-05-29T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Edie could not quite shake off the idea that she might be hallucinating.

‘But you … you went to London,’ she said.

‘In the end, I decide to stay,’ said Sylvie coolly, taking an unoffered seat at the dressing-table. ‘Because a little bird tells me – a little Jenny wren – that my position may be available again sooner than I think.’

‘Jenny? What on earth could she tell you? She barely knows me.’

‘She does not need to know you. She knows Sir Charles well enough. When he has an eye on a maid, she soon disgraces herself. It is a fact of life at Deverell Hall.’

‘There was one maid,’ said Edie. ‘One. He looks after the child, financially.’

Sylvie laughed. ‘And all the girls before the war as well. You are the last in a long, long line. Not a very distinguished one, I’m afraid.’

‘I’m not in any line,’ retorted Edie, her blood up, ready to defend herself. ‘I’m not some sighing little idiot, thinking I can bag myself a lord. You’re quite, quite wrong about me.’

‘Oh?’ Sylvie’s composure was maddening. ‘But I’m not wrong about you coming here straight from his bed, am I?’

Edie could not lie so blatantly.

‘It’s none of your blasted business what I do and with whom,’ she said.

‘So he has had you,’ said Sylvie. ‘It’s quite obvious anyway – I can smell him on you. And your face – that pathetic rapture, that glow. You make me sick.’

Edie’s legs were trembling again; she had to sit down on the bed. She winced as her tender nether parts made contact with the mattress.

‘Now you have given him what he wants,’ Sylvie continued, her voice low with malice, ‘I say it will last perhaps a month. Until he is bored of you, or you fall pregnant.’

‘That won’t happen,’ said Edie, helplessly adrift.

‘No, you’re right, because it will end before then. It will end tomorrow, when Lady Deverell packs you off home without a character.’

‘I don’t think she’ll do that,’ said Edie, suddenly struck by a pathway out of this odious predicament.

‘No?’ Sylvie laughed.

‘No. Because then there would be nothing to stop me telling Lord Deverell about her affair with Charles.’

Sylvie screwed up her face scornfully. ‘As if he would believe you.’

‘Perhaps he wouldn’t. But do you know that for certain?’

‘Listen, I hate that woman with all my heart, but I did not say a word to Lord Deverell because I know I will be blamed and disbelieved and I will lose my character for ever. No good house will take on, what do you call it, a tattle-tale. Discretion is the better part of service, non?’

‘I’ll do it, if you breathe a word of this. I promise you.’

‘Then you will never work again.’

Edie smiled, a twitchy nervous thing.

I don’t have to, she told herself, meaning it. Not that she dreamed of really telling Lord Deverell a word of it. But somehow she had to get this devil off her back.

‘I don’t care,’ she said, as calmly as she could. ‘I don’t care about working again.

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