Page 20 of His Improper Lady

“You’re right.” Hope began to rise in her. “All I ever asked him was what Bruna had told him about our father.”

“They all worked in the same music halls even though they were in separate acts,” Wells pointed out. “He could have seen your father waiting for Stella outside the stage door. Or he could know some other performer or friend. And surely they came to visit her at the house after Stella stopped working. After all, they were good enough friends to our mother that they took in her children after Stella left. One doesn’t take on a six-year-old and a pair of infants for a casual acquaintance.”

“Not many would have done that even for a close friend,” Brock said. “They were kind people.”

“Yes, they were,” Wells agreed. “They were our parents, really.”

“It was a good life,” Desiree agreed. “I enjoyed it—the tricks, the traveling.”

“Bruna the Italian Angel and the Magnificent Malones!” Brock raised his glass in a toast, smiling in reminiscence. “It was grand rolling into town in the wagons. All the people turning out, following us to the edge of town.”

“The horses with the plumes on their heads, the harnesses shined, the wagons all decorated,” Desiree added.

“You remember you and Wells sitting on the lead horses?” Brock said. “And they’d have me dressed like the ringmaster in the driver’s seat, holding the reins. It made everyone laugh.”

“And gasp when you pretended to fall out the side, then scrambled back in.” Desiree laughed. “Wells loved the parades.”

“I did,” he agreed with a smile. “I loved everything to do with the horses. You, as I remember, were scared of them.”

“I was. I had no desire to learn the riding tricks with you.”

“Wells has always been a bit mad,” Brock said. “My heart used to be in my throat, watching you ride around the ring, Wells, standing on the horse’s back. You were so little up there. And absolutely fearless.”

“Oh, I had plenty of fear. I’d fallen off enough times—once the horse almost kicked me in the head when I tumbled off.”

“The best trick was when you’d jump off the horse onto the platform and somersault off, then run around and back up the steps and jump onto Bonnie’s back again as she ran by.”

“More like trotted by,” Wells told her. “The timing was everything there. But it wasn’t that dangerous. Not like you walking across the tightrope.”

“I always had a net.” Desiree leaned her head back against the chair, remembering. She could almost smell the sawdust and feel the rope beneath her feet. The gasps of the audience as she flew through the air from her trapeze into Sid’s hands, the breathless silence as she walked across the rope, the thunderous applause. “It was fun.”

“Most of the time,” Brock agreed. “Of course, there was also the time when the circus disbanded in the Cotswolds and we had to make our way back to London on our own.”

“True. As I remember, Sid kept to the city and the music halls after that,” Wells said.

“The Royal Aquarium. The Golden Palace. I thought they were so glamorous.”

“And we could nab food from the vendors.” Wells grinned.

Brock let out a little huff of a laugh. “True. It was a good life.” His face darkened. “Until the fire.”

Wells nodded. “Until Falk.”

The conversation died after that, and Desiree left her brothers, going up to her room. Her anger at Tom Quick hadn’t died, just simmered beneath the surface during her talk with her brothers, and she could feel it bubbling up again as she climbed the stairs.

She didn’t fault him for being upset that she had broken into his office; it was a violation—even though one would think it might have counted for something that she hadn’t stolen anything and had taken care not to damage the place in her search. Annoyance, even anger, was understandable, especially given the fact that she’d slipped out of his grasp twice.

But last night he had seemed more frustrated and chagrined at being bested than anything else. Today, it had been fury that shone from his eyes. Obviously, he hated Falk; that was understandable, too. But why had he lit up like a Roman candle when she’d said she was a Moreland?

Desiree remembered the way he’d looked at her, the utter contempt in his eyes. She, obviously, was a nobody, someone who would stain the entire family just by existing. As if she was the one who had done something wrong, not the man who’d indiscriminately spread his seed around. A Moreland, apparently, could do no wrong in Tom Quick’s eyes.

She snorted, thinking of his claim that all the Morelands were utterly faithful to their wives. You’d think they were a family of saints, the way he talked. He couldn’t possibly be that naive. What business was it of his, anyway? It wasn’t as if she was threatening Tom in any way.

He wasn’t a Moreland—well, perhaps that wasn’t the case. Desiree rethought the matter. He could be related—a different last name didn’t mean anything. His mother could be a Moreland or perhaps he was another illegitimate child. It gave her a faintly queasy feeling to think that there might be a chance he was related to her, even distantly. She’d been attracted to the man.

It was humiliating to think how very much she had been attracted to him. She’d initiated a conversation with him, flirted with him, made it obvious that she was interested in him. That was something she never did. There had been other men whose smiles had beckoned her or whose faces and forms drew her eye. She wouldn’t deny that she had flirted with men now and again. After all, what fun was life if one went through it like a wooden statue?

But she never made the first move. In all things, just as in the games, Desiree played her hand coolly. She took her time and never betrayed her interest. Her head ruled her senses and emotions. Perhaps, as Brock said, she was too daring for her own good, but she was not that way when it came to men. She had her mother as an example of what not to do with her life.