Page 61 of A Figure of Love

“Mrs. Lombard has told me nothing about you.”

Again, Etienne chuckled. “I am crushed to hear it.” He smiled at Serena, but his eyes were as hard as iron. “Especially when I consider her my favorite cousin.”

“You have many cousins, Mr. Bardot?”

Although Mr. Lockheart’s voice sounded the same as usual, the sheer volume of words he’d spoken since leaving the river betrayed his suspicion to anyone who’d spent any time around him. Serena prayed her cousin would shut up, but Etienne had always considered himself the smartest man in any room.

“Only the one in England.”

“Two.”

“I beg your pardon?” Etienne asked.

“You have two cousins here—Mrs. Lombard and her son.”

Etienne laughed, even though Mr. Lockheart had said nothing amusing. “Yes, that is true. How foolish of me. Now he would be my second cousin? Or first cousin, once removed?” He waved his lavender-gloved hand. “I can never recall such distinctions.”

“You have come to visit your cousins for a few days, Mr. Bardot? Tomorrow we will have something of an event, followed by celebrations in town. Mrs. Lombard has organized it all—a dinner and small dance at the King’s Head, our local inn.”

Etienne was momentarily rendered speechless by his offer. So was Serena. Not only at Gareth’s uncharacteristic effusiveness, but at the sheer horror of having Etienne anywhere within a hundred leagues of her son.

Etienne’s face flushed—most likely in anticipation of what he could steal if he was allowed to run tame in Gareth’s house.

“Why thank you, Mr. Lockheart, I should be delighted to stay for a spell. Tell me, what is this event you speak of?”

The remainder of the walk was given over to Etienne’s disingenuous interest in the rock moving and Gareth’s strangely comprehensive explanations.

Meanwhile, Serena’s mind spun and whirled trying to figure out a way to get the man who’d raped her, fathered her child, and was now blackmailing her, out of the house before he did something stupid and exposed her lies, as well as his own.

Chapter Fifteen

Gareth did not know what was between Serena and Etienne Bardot, but he suspected it was not cousinly affection.

While he couldn’t identify exactly what he sensed, he wasn’t willing to dismiss his keen perception when it came to subjects that interested him. And nothing had ever interested him as much as Serena Lombard.

Gareth knew he should feel ashamed at the relief that had washed over him when Bardot arrived and saved him from having to make sensible conversation with a woman whom he’d just mounted not once, but twice. But his relief had overwhelmed any shame or remorse.

Right or wrong, Dec’s words had taken root into his mind the way lichen penetrated brick and mortar: “You’ve let your wealth soften your brain; you are from the London gutter and she was the husband of a duke’s son. Trust me Gareth, fine women might come to men like us for a bit of rough, but they will never do more than take us to their beds.”

Venetia’s observations couldn’t have been more different than Dec’s.

So, he had two friends with completely different opinions of his situation. Which one of them should he believe?

Gareth told himself the answer was irrelevant. He would ask for her hand in marriage no matter which of his friends he decided he believed. If she did not want him, he would be disappointed, but he’d weathered disappointment many times and survived. Still, he did not wish to offer for her if it would only put her in the unpleasant position of having to decline her employer.

In any event, he had time to decided; he could not speak to her on the subject with her cousin present.

Etienne Bardot was a man who liked to hear himself talk. He might rival even Dec on that score. But while Declan McElroy was amusing, witty, and—ultimately—kind, Bardot was self-centered, vain, and uninteresting. He also clung to his cousin like a limpet.

Not until Serena had excused herself—close to midnight—did Bardot leave for his own chambers.

Gareth heaved a sigh of relief when he had the library to himself. He’d hardly had a second away from Bardot since meeting the man. When he’d gone to the lake to deliver the specially made rope net he’d had made, Bardot came with him. When he came down to dinner early, hoping to catch up on some correspondence before dining, Bardot was waiting to play a game of billiards with him.

He’d talked non-stop through dinner about his activities in London—gambling, shooting, and boxing at Jacksons—his excursion to some friend’s hunting box last fall, the warm reception he’d received from Serena’s housemate, the lovely and distinguished Lady Winifred Sedgwick—and on and on. When Serena left them to their port Bardot consumed the better part of a bottle in thirty minutes.

Gareth had half worried, half hoped that Serena would have already gone to bed when they returned to the library, because then he’d have felt entitled to go up to his chambers, as well.

But she’d been waiting for them.