Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
But Daniel was smiling at me.
And Portia was watching me closely.
She turned her hand under Daniel’s and linked fingers.
The panel opened in the wall and Stevenson ushered Jack and Sam in.
We’d already had a lot to chew on.
But for now, we had to set that aside.
It was time for the main course.
Needless to say, when we left the dining room, Portia and Daniel, Lou, Ian and I didn’t follow the others to the Wine Room for a digestif.
I walked Lou up to her room and made sure she took her migraine tablet and drank a whole glass of water besides. I then pulled the bell, and when she arrived, asked Harriet to fill her water carafe so she could have some close at hand in order to stay hydrated.
I could tell it was getting worse, so I helped her get undressed and brushed her hair into a ponytail while she took off her makeup and did her skincare regime.
Once she was tucked in bed, and I’d had a word in the hall with Harriet about keeping an eye on Lou tonight as she dealt with her migraine, and she promised she’d look in again before she was off the clock at eleven, I went back downstairs to the Conservatory.
Ian was alone with a cigarette and a brooding expression.
“Can I have one of those?” I asked.
“Do you smoke?” he asked in return.
“No.”
“Then no.”
He was sitting in the middle of the couch.
I sat in a chair opposite him.
“Where are Portia and Daniel?” I queried.
“Who knows? Who cares?”
I cared, obviously. Since I asked.
Though, with his oppressive mood, I didn’t share that.
I gave it a few minutes, and in those few minutes, Ian set his burning cigarette in the clean ashtray, pushed out of the couch, went to the drinks cabinet, came back, and reaching across the low table between us, he handed me a snifter of Amaretto.
Thoughtful. Funny. Gorgeous. Protective.
Ugh.
I took a sip while he folded back into his sofa, reclaimed his cigarette and continued smoking pensively.
Then I noted carefully, “She’s very beautiful.”
“If that’s your effort at trying to make me feel better I fucked that bitch, I’m afraid, my darling, it’s not going to work.”
“Is that why you’re in such a mood?”
“I’m not telling you about Dorothy Clifton to get you in my bed. I’m telling you because you want to know.”
“I know that.”
“As I told her about Joan because she wanted to know.”
“Will you tell me about Joan?”
“You didn’t do very well with your research if you don’t know about Joan and Thomas, Daphne,” he chided.
“Well, I do. The Cuthbert affair. You just seem to know so much more than the internet.”
“My great aunt considered herself an Alcott historian. She listened avidly, researched single-mindedly, and these efforts bore fruit. There are about twelve of her handwritten diaries on the history of Duncroft and the Alcotts.”
“Have you read them?” I queried.
“Every last one.”
“Is that a prerequisite to becoming an earl?”
He stopped watching the smoke curl lazily from his cigarette and turned his attention to me.
With the brand of that attention (“brand” being the operative word, for I felt scorched), I braced.
“No. It was a young man’s desperate attempt to learn all the reasons why his father was an inveterate adulterer in an effort to circumvent that happening to myself should I fall in love with a woman and make her my wife.”
“You’re not your dad,” I said gently.
He inhaled and blew a cloud of smoke over his head.
It floated behind him, away from me, like he could even will smoke to go where he wished.
What he didn’t do was respond.
“Tell me about Joan,” I urged.
“Bored with Dorothy?”
“I sense that story is more about Virginia, and no. I’m not bored with it. But tonight, I want to hear about Joan. And Rose.”
“You only get one, love.”
“Then Joan,” I picked.
He launched right in.
“The beauty of the Season. The Exquisite. The Prized Jewel. She should have gone to a duke. Maybe even a prince. She stupidly fell in love with an earl.”
“I sense this story isn’t about her infidelity.”
He studied the burning tip of the cigarette, which was almost to the gold paper.
Then he leaned forward and snuffed it out.
After that, he got up and went to the drinks cabinet. “Fair warning, it’s scandalous.”
“I’m not easily scandalized.”
“Thomas liked to fuck and be fucked.”
Okay, maybe I was easily scandalized.
“He liked to fuck Joan and watch others fuck her too,” Ian carried on.
Definitely, I was easily scandalized.
“So he was bi?” I asked.
He came back with what appeared to be Cognac and resumed his seat.
“No, he was pan. Men. Women. Pain. Bondage. Giving and taking. He held orgies in this house. He had whores of all persuasions on his payroll. No maid was safe from his attentions. No footman safe from buggery. He was a sexual menace in a time while holding a class where that went entirely unchecked. He could do whatever, and whoever he wanted with impunity. Even if they didn’t want it.”