Drury Lane Darling Read Online Free PDF Page B

since arriving. “I wonder what Fleur wants to talk to Papa about,” he said.
    “Probably the old days at Brighton. Is her book full of scandal, Nigel?”
    “Certainly not! It isn’t that sort of thing at all. Just because Fleur is an actress, it don’t mean she has loose morals, you know. She’s a regular martyr if you want the truth. A heroine. You’ve no idea what that woman’s been through.”
    “About two dozen lovers, according to gossip,” Pamela suggested before she got a rein on her tongue.
    Breslau listened silently as he went to the side table to exchange his teacup for a glass of wine.
    “She has not,” Nigel said like a sulky boy. “It’s just her generous nature that misleads folks. There are going to be a lot of surprised people if they think her memoirs are scandalous.”
    “A lot of disappointed people,” Pamela added.
    During a short silence, they all heard the sound of raised voices coming from the study. Pamela’s eyes lit up with interest. She noticed that Breslau didn’t return to the group, but hovered close to the door, where he might hope to catch the odd word from the study.
    She ran to the table, grabbed a glass of wine, and joined him. The draft from the front door sent a shiver up her bare arms. “It’s nice and cool here,” she said. “So stuffy by the fire.”
    “Goose bumps become you, Miss Comstock.”
    “Shh!” she exclaimed shamelessly, and tilted her head toward the study. “What did she say? Did you catch that?”
    “It sounded like ‘your son.’ You don’t suppose Aubrey charged her with corrupting a minor?”
    “Brighton—it sounded like Brighton.”
    “Shall we put a glass to the door?” Breslau asked, and smiled.
    “There!” Pamela said, her eyes glistening with excitement. “She said ‘your son,’ again. Doesn’t she sound angry? I wish Sir Aubrey would speak louder. I can’t make out a word he says.”
    “He was always a contrary gent.”
    Pamela sidled into the hall, ostensibly to look at a Chinese planter holding a fatigued palm tree, but with one ear turned to the door. Breslau peered toward the staircase, then down the other way, and looked a question at her.
    “Something about quarter day,” she whispered.
    “What the deuce are you two doing?” Nigel called in a querulous voice, and joined them.
    “We were just admiring the palm,” Pamela said, and quickly returned to the saloon with him.
    Nigel cast a certain look at Breslau, as though to say, What did I tell you? As dull as ditch water.
    That look called Pamela back to her role as dullard. “Mama has a very nice palm in the reading room at home,” she said. “Did I tell you, Nigel, your mother gave me one of Hanna More’s tracts for the reformation of the poor for Christmas? She recommends I join the Religious Tract Society. It sounds very interesting.”
    “What do they do?” Nigel asked.
    “Why, they reform the poor and write tracts about it I suppose,” she replied vaguely.”
    Breslau stared at Miss Comstock, wondering if he had been misled by the woman who had sat with him at the tea tray a moment ago. Had he mistaken country manners for wit?
    “Hanna would do better to reform the rich,” he said.
    Miss Comstock lifted an innocent eye and replied, “The rich, I fear, are past reclaiming.”
    “What are you calling rich, madam? Anything over, say, ten thousand pounds?”
    Pamela failed to catch the reference to her dowry. “Ten thousand per annum isn’t rich. It’s obscene,” she replied.
    “I didn’t mean per annum. And I hope I am not obscene.”
    She inhaled sharply. No one had ten thousand a year. “Do you have that much, Breslau? What on earth do you do with so much money?” Nigel gave a sound of disgust and she quickly added, “Did you ever consider joining the Religious Tract Society, milord? What a lot of tracts we could publish with your blunt.”
    “This is true, but I find better things to do with my blunt than chastise the poor for not being