Page 50 of His Wicked Charm

“How could you know about that? It happened nine years ago. You were scarcely out of short pants.”

Con laughed. “As it happens, the length of my trousers had little to do with what I learned. However, I read about it two or three years ago when I took over the agency. In Olivia’s collected accounts of...”

“Hoaxes? Charlatans?”

“I was going to say unusual occurrences. There were a number of stories about that séance. It caught the newspapers’ attention. It’s not often you have a pack of peers sitting around a table summoning spirits. It’s even more unusual when those spirits come crashing into the room, shattering the windows and plunging the whole room into darkness. As I heard it, the air fairly crackled with energy, and everyone’s hair stood on end.”

Lilah made a disgusted sound. “What nonsense. It was only a storm. They held a séance in the midst of a storm, and the wind shattered one of the old windows. The room was lit by only candles—for the proper atmosphere, you see—so it’s no surprise that the gust of wind blew out all the lights. I know. I was there.”

Con’s eyebrows shot up. “You were at the Brockminster Séance? But you were only... What? Twelve?”

“I was often at Aunt Vesta’s séances.” Her mouth twisted. “Father thought my presence might make my dead mother more willing to come back.”

“I see.” And he did. This news made a lot of things clearer.

“I knew you would.”

“And that is why you tried so hard to dissuade me from coming here. You were embarrassed not only about the house, but also your aunt.”

“My whole family,” she tossed back. “Of course I was embarrassed. Barrow House looks as if it was built by a madman. And it probably was. The Holcutts always had a reputation for being peculiar. My aunt thinks she’s connected to some unearthly force. My father spent my whole life trying to communicate with his dead wife.” For an instant, tears glittered in her eyes before she blinked them away.

“Lilah...” Con’s voice was soft. He stepped forward and placed his hands on her arms, moving them up and down in a soothing manner. “There was no need to worry about my reaction. I am the least likely person in the world to be shocked by the Holcutts. My family is known all over England as the Mad Morelands after all.”

Lilah jerked out of his grasp. “Yes, but you didn’t have an aunt who created an enormous scandal by holding an infamous séance, then adopted the name Madame LeClaire, declared herself a psychic and ran off to Europe with Brockminster’s nephew.”

“Abandoning you,” Con added. His heart twisted a little, thinking of the girl, little more than a child, going through what must have been a frightening experience, however much Lilah discounted it—and then losing the aunt who had always taken care of her.

Lilah waved his comment away. “That didn’t matter.”

“I think it mattered quite a bit,” Con replied. “She must have been in the place of a mother to you since your own mother died young.”

“Aunt Vesta is hardly a maternal sort. She may have lived with me, but I wouldn’t call her influence as being like a mother. That role belongs to my other aunt, the normal one. Aunt Helena took me to live with her in order to preserve my reputation. She knew my name would be tainted with scandal if I remained here with no better influence than a father who spent all his time trying to commune with the dead. Worse, Aunt Vesta could have come back at any time. Even my father saw how bad it would be for me. I could never have made a good marriage. As soon as I made my debut, the rumors would be flying. ‘You remember her aunt, don’t you? Cut from the same cloth, I warrant.’”

“I understand it now.” And he did. Motherless, largely ignored by her father, deserted—however Lilah might deny it—by the aunt who had raised her, Lilah had been cast adrift. Her rule-abiding aunt Helena had saved her, but it had meant leaving her home and breaking away from everything she had known. “Your antipathy to the occult, the way you stay away from your home, your abhorrence of scandal. It’s no wonder you’re so insistent on following the rules.”

“Of course I want to follow the rules. Of course I abhor creating a scandal. Who doesn’t? Everyone does. Except you.” She turned and started away, then swung back to say, “I am planning to ride to Carmoor first thing tomorrow.”

He executed a little bow. “I will be there.”

Con watched as Lilah strode away. It was no wonder the woman was such a study in contrasts. Imagine living half one’s life in a completely unconventional manner, going to séances, trying to contact their dead mother’s spirit. Then living the other half in the most conventional, rigid, rule-abiding style.

Lilah regarded Aunt Helena as having saved her. Perhaps she had, at least from a torrent of gossip. But Con could not but think that the woman had stifled Lilah’s spirit, as well. It came out in flashes—when Lilah laughed without thinking how it looked, when she was hot on the chase after the kidnappers, when some idea sparked the light of interest in her eyes.

There was far more to Lilah than the shell her aunt had sought to create around her. And Con was becoming very interested in discovering what lay beneath it.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

LILAH COULD SCARCELY believe she had said all that—and to Con of all people. He thought he understood her because his own family was odd. But that was precisely why he could not understand what she felt—the shame and anger, the resentment, the hunger to fit in, the determination to be so good, so right, that no one would even think of her as one of those Holcutts.

Con felt none of those things. The Morelands didn’t embarrass him; he reveled in their reputation. Happy and secure in the midst of his loyal, loving family, he had never felt the weight of others’ opinions. With his twin beside him, he had never been lonely. God knows, he certainly had never been afraid. Even when he was a child he and Alex had sailed into any danger, confident that they would win out—or if they did not, their older siblings would rescue them.

She hadn’t feared he would be appalled by her story. What she dreaded was his amusement. Con would consider her narrow-minded and rigid to be embarrassed by her aunt’s behavior. He would love the irony that the straitlaced, oh-so-proper Lilah Holcutt had a family as bizarre as his.

Now he would tease her about Aunt Vesta and her séance or the oddities of Barrow House. He had admitted that he enjoyed annoying her—and she still did not understand that—and this knowledge gave him plentiful ammunition.

What if he found it such an entertaining story that he told it to others? He would certainly tell Alex; that wouldn’t be too bad since Sabrina already knew Lilah’s family. But what if he recounted it to the others in his family? The women with whom Lilah had become tentative friends: Olivia, who had once occupied herself with revealing fraudulent mediums, his outspoken mother and—worst of all—Megan, a journalist! She must persuade him to keep the story to himself.

Lilah came downstairs the next morning already dressed in her riding habit. It was a bottle green that went well with her hair. Though the style was plain, as habits usually were, it was set off by the unusual fastening of four large wooden buttons running diagonally across the front. The finishing touch was a small hat accented by a green-and-blue feather that curled forward, almost touching her face.