Lady Maggie's Secret Scandal Read Online Free PDF Page B

as if to underscore the point.
    It was tempting, very, very tempting, to gently pry details from Portmaine. Here in their home, brandy warming his gut, Portmaine would prattle on the same as any other man on familiar turf.
    But there were lines Benjamin Hazlit wouldn’t cross.
    Though it would just be gossip, after all. They gossiped with each other, because really, there wasn’t anybody else with whom they could share all the society effluvia they came across in their work.
    “So what else had Lord Val to say about his steadiest sister?”
    ***
     
    Maggie’s head footman rapped on the open door of the breakfast parlor.
    “Lord Valentine to see you, madam.”
    “Thank you, Hobbs,” Val said, sauntering in still sporting his evening attire. “But since when do we announce family?”
    “Since you’ve gone for a husband,” Maggie said, rising to kiss his cheek. “And your arrival twice in twenty-four hours has to be worth noting. Have some breakfast.”
    “Don’t mind if I do.”
    “Were you up all night playing?”
    He filled a plate at the sideboard, while Maggie noted the signs of fatigue about his eyes. Val had been a gorgeous youth, sensuous, dreamy, and probably more sexually attractive than he knew. Having been parted from her for months though, Maggie saw him with new eyes, realizing he was making the transition from handsome young man to breathtaking maturity. She’d missed him and missed his music, too.
    “I played some,” he said, taking a seat at her right hand. “I’m bunking in with Viscount Fairly, and I wanted you to have my direction. When was the last time your Broadwood was tuned?” He passed her a calling card with an address on the back. One of the better addresses, actually.
    “You sent your fellows over at the first of the year. You always do if you aren’t here to see to it yourself.”
    “Mags, are you happy?” He tucked into his eggs as if he hadn’t just asked a very personal, unusual question.
    “What makes you ask?”
    He looked up from his eggs, green eyes troubled. “That isn’t a yes.”
    “You’ve been up all night, Valentine. Were you perhaps imbibing for much of the evening?”
    “Right.” He smiled at her. “I’m knee-crawling drunk and in need of a good old-fashioned scolding. If you’re not happy, what would it take to make you happy?”
    There was something behind his smile, something Maggie suspected a woman would call concern and a man wouldn’t deign to put a label on even under threat of torture.
    “It’s just that until I married Ellen, there was something missing—a large something. Still, I wasn’t unhappy. You’re not unhappy, either, unless I miss my guess.”
    Not unhappy. He was insightful, her baby brother. Inconveniently so.
    “I have my charities,” she said, rising with the need to put some distance between them. A few beats of silence went by while Maggie stared out the window at her back gardens and Val said nothing.
    Then, “You danced with Hazlit.”
    “Gracious God.” Maggie turned and braced her hips on the windowsill. “I danced with Lord Fanshaw and Dudley Parrington, too. What of it?”
    “The last two are His Grace’s cronies of long standing, and you danced a waltz with Hazlit. I can’t recall when you’ve waltzed with anybody but me or Dev or Gayle.”
    Or Bart or Victor, their two deceased brothers.
    “I waltz with His Grace.”
    “At your come out, maybe, fifteen years ago.”
    “It wasn’t fifteen years ago.” Though it soon would be.
    “Mags, bickering won’t answer my question. Why Hazlit?”
    “I wanted to speak to him, and the dance floor has a kind of privacy.”
    “About?”
    “Valentine.” She put as much of the Duchess of Moreland’s hauteur in her tone as she could, which was considerable.
    “Gayle likes him,” Val said, clearly not the least cowed. “And not only because Sophie just married his half brother. I thought you should know.”
    Which meant Gayle would be coming around to