“A great number of invitations, my Lord, but I will not trouble you with them now and several private letters. I have put them on your desk.”
The Earl walked over to the desk and saw four envelopes written in what was obviously female handwriting.
Mr. Grotham was always too tactful to open any letter or note that he thought might be personal and after years of service with his Lordship he was extremely astute in recognising a woman’s hand.
The Earl saw at once that three of the letters were from Lady Genevieve. There was no mistaking her rather untidy and over-elaborate style and, as he looked down at them, his lips tightened.
He had not referred again to the matter that Lord Yaxley and he had discussed last night, but the anger that the information had aroused still seethed within him.
How dare she attempt, he asked himself, to catch him by the oldest trick in the world and how could he have been such a fool as to credit for one moment that she was telling him the truth?
When he had started his love affair with Genevieve, he had no intention of it becoming serious. He had expected it to be just a light-hearted liaison between two sophisticated people who understood the rules of the game.
That Genevieve had fallen in love with him, according to what she had told him, had not perturbed him in the slightest, except for the fact that she seemed determined to proclaim her affection for him noisily and incessantly.
He found her desirable, extremely fascinating, and one of the most passionate women he had ever known in his life.
She amused him and he had paid for her favours with diamonds, rubies and a stream of exorbitant bills from Bond Street dressmakers. He had also provided her with a carriage and horses that were the envy of all her friends.
Never for one moment had the Earl considered marrying Lady Genevieve Rodney.
She was the type of woman who, he knew from past experience, was incapable of being faithful either to a husband or to a lover.
He was quite certain that, should the temptation arise, she would not hesitate to deceive him behind his back by taking to her bed any man who aroused her desires.
But what he did not realise was that Genevieve found him irresistible, simply and solely because, as had been said so often about him, he was elusive.
There was something about the Earl that no woman had ever been able to capture.
Even in the closest moments of intimacy she always knew that she did not possess him, that he was not completely and wholeheartedly hers. So because the Earl eluded Genevieve, perhaps for the first time in her life, she being the seeker not the sought, she fell in love!
She did not possess a deep nature and her emotions were very much on the surface, but she was a fiery creature with an insatiable craving for any man who took her fancy.
With the Earl she found that her heart was unsatisfied however competent a lover he proved in every other way.
She so wanted him at her feet. She wanted him subservient as other men had been. She wanted to capture him and. because he eluded her, she made up her mind to marry him.
Apart from any personal desire in the matter, the Earl was a parti to whom no female in the length and breadth of the country was likely to say ‘no’.
Apart from the many tales of his vast fortune, his estates and his priceless possessions, a woman had only to look at him, tall, broad-shouldered, handsome and confidently very sure of himself, to feel her heart turn over in her breast.
Genevieve exerted every wile in her extensive repertoire to enthral the Earl.
She found it easy to arouse his desires and he was extremely generous. But he never professed to love her and there was always a cynical twist to his lips and a slightly mocking note in his voice when he talked to her.
She knew only too well that she was not essential to him. When he left her she was never quite certain when she would see him again. She was not even sure that he missed her when he was away from her.
In fact he drove her crazy!
“When are you going to marry me, Osric?” she asked daringly one night as she lay close in his arms and the flames of the fire gave the only light in her flower-scented bedroom.
“You are greedy, Genevieve,” the Earl replied.
“Greedy?” she questioned.
“Yes,” he answered. “I gave you a diamond necklace yesterday. Last week it was rubies, and I think the week before that it was an emerald brooch that took your fancy. And now you want more!”
“Only a small gold ring,” she whispered.
“That is the one thing I cannot afford.”
“But why? We would be happy together, you know we would.”
“What do you call happiness?” the Earl questioned evasively.
“Being with you,” Genevieve replied. “You know that I make you happy.”
She moved nearer to him and threw back her head so that her lips invited his.
He looked down at her and she could not read the expression in his eyes.
“I love you,” she breathed. “Marry me, please, marry me!”
In answer he had kissed her passionately and the fire that, in both of them, was never far from the surface burst into a blaze.
They were consumed by the great heat of it and it was only later when she was alone that Genevieve remembered that he had not answered her question.
Now the Earl was angry and his eyes were hard as he looked down at the three letters on which his name was inscribed with the same dashing imperious flourish.
Deliberately he reached for another letter, which was in a writing he did not recognise.
“If you don’t need me now, my Lord, and have no further instructions,” Mr. Grotham said respectfully, “may I retire?”
“I believe I am dining at the Devonshire’s tonight?” the Earl asked him.
“Yes, my Lord, I have ordered your carriage.”
“What answer did you make to Lady Chevington’s invitation to Epsom?”
“You said you would think about it on your return, my Lord.”
“Accept,” the Earl said briefly.
“Very good, my Lord, and may I congratulate your Lordship on your win today?”
“The grooms told you, I suppose?” the Earl said. “It was very satisfying. I think Delos will prove to be a great horse.”
“I hope so, my Lord. I hope so indeed.”
“Did you have a few shillings on him?”
