Bound By A Scandalous Secret

‘Dell only inherited the title last summer. I believe your resentment belongs to his father.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Oh. I did not know.’

Dell might not desire him to say more. Ross changed the subject. ‘I have no objection to your seeing your mother’s bedchamber,’

She recovered from her embarrassment and blinked up at him with feigned innocence. ‘Me? Enter a gentleman’s bedchamber accompanied by the gentleman himself? What would Lord Tinmore say?’

‘This will be one of those instances where Lord Tinmore will never know.’ He grinned. ‘Besides, for propriety’s sake we will leave the door open and I dare say my valet will be inside—’

Her eyes widened in mock horror. ‘A witness? He might tell Lord Tinmore! We would be married post-haste, I assure you.’

She mocked the idea of being married, so unlike the other young women thrown at him.

Her expression turned conspiratorial. ‘Although I am pining to show you something about the house, so we might step inside the room just for a moment.’

With no one else would Ross risk such a thing, for the very reason of which she’d joked.

He opened the door and, as he expected, his valet was in the room, tending to his clothes.

‘Do not be alarmed, Coogan,’ he said to his man. ‘We will be only a moment.’

‘Yes, Coogan.’ Genna giggled. ‘Only a moment.’

‘Do you require something, m’lord?’ Coogan asked. ‘I was about to join the servants for dinner, but I can delay—’

‘We are touring the house and Miss Summerfield wishes to show me something about the room,’ Ross replied. ‘Stay until we leave.’

Ross was glad to have a witness, just in case.

She stepped just inside the doorway and faced a wall papered in pale blue. She pressed on a spot and a door opened, a door that heretofore had been unnoticed by Ross.

‘We’ll be leaving now,’ she said to his valet and gestured for Ross to follow her.

They could not have been more than a fraction of a minute.

As soon as he stepped over this secret threshold, she pushed the door closed. Their lamp illuminated a secret hallway that disappeared into the darkness.

‘My grandfather built this house so that he would never have to encounter his servants in the house unless they were performing some service for him. He had secret doors put in all the rooms and connected them all with hidden passages. The servants had to scurry through these narrow spaces. We can get to any part of the house from here.’ She headed towards the darkness. ‘Come. I’ll show you.’

* * *

Dell remained in the dining room with Lorene until they’d both finished the cakes that Cook had made for dessert. Their conversation was sparse and awkward.

He’d never met his Lincolnshire cousins, knew them only by the scandal and gossip that followed the family and had no reason to give them a further thought. He’d not been prepared for the likes of Lorene.

Lovely, demure, sad.

When he and Lorene retired to the drawing room, he was even more aware of the intimacy of their situation. What had he been thinking to allow Ross and the all-too-lively Genna to go off into the recesses of the house? Why the devil had Tinmore not simply refused the invitation? Why send his wife and her sister alone?

He realised they were standing in the drawing room.

She gestured to the pianoforte. ‘Shall I play for you?’

‘If you wish.’ It would save him from attempting conversation with her, something that seemed to fail him of late.

She sat at the pianoforte and started to play. After the first few hesitant notes, she seemed to lose her self-consciousness and her playing became more assured and fluid. He recognised the piece she chose. It was one his sister used to play—Mozart’s Andante Grazioso. The memory stabbed at his heart.

Lorene played the piece with skill and feeling. When she came to the end and looked up at him, he immediately said, ‘Play another.’

This time she began confidently—Pathétique by Beethoven—and he fancied she showed in the music that sadness he sensed in her. It touched his own.

And drew him to her in a manner that was not to be advised.

She was married to a man who wielded much influence in the House of Lords. Dell would be new to the body. Ross was right. He needed to tread carefully if he wished to do any good.

When Lorene finished this piece, she automatically went on to another, then another, each one filled with melancholy. With yearning.

The music moved him.

She moved him.

When she finally placed her hands in her lap, they were trembling. ‘That is all I know by heart.’

‘Surely there is sheet music here.’ He looked around the pianoforte.

She rose and opened a nearby cabinet. ‘It is in here.’ She removed the top sheet and looked at it. ‘Oh. It is a song I used to play.’

‘Play it if you like.’ After all, what could he say to her if she stopped playing? His insides were already shredded.

She placed the sheet on the music rack, played the first notes and, to his surprise, began to sing.

I have a silent sorrow here,

A grief I’ll ne’er impart;

It breathes no sigh, it sheds no tear,

But it consumes my heart.

This cherished woe, this loved despair,

My lot for ever be,

So my soul’s lord, the pangs to bear

Be never known by thee.

Her voice was clear and pure and the feeling behind the lyrics suggested this was a song that had meaning for her. What was her ‘cherished woe’, her ‘loved despair’? He knew what his grief was.