Franny turned to smile at her. “Lord Stoneleigh won’t be able to take his eyes off—”
“Franny!” Prue blurted out. “I, ah . . . I’ve made a terrible mistake, one I regret extremely.”
Franny turned away from the gown, her eyebrows drawing together. “Goodness, you’ve gone quite red. What have you done?”
“I—I found something in Basingstoke’s study the other night.”
Franny blinked. “Is that all?”
If only it was! “No, I’m afraid not.” Prue rose, fetched the earrings from the wardrobe and dropped one of them into Franny’s hand. “I found these earrings. They’re rather remarkable ones. At first, I thought they were yours.”
“My goodness.” Franny held up the earring. “No. I’ve never seen them before in my life. That’s a very fine ruby, is it not? It’s not paste, that’s certain, not with that fire. But they’re not the sort of jewels I prefer. They’re beautiful, of course, but a bit much for my tastes.”
“Yes, I know that now. They’re, ah, they belong to the Duke of Montford. You recall I told you he fell asleep on your chaise the other night, and that I found one of his gloves underneath it the following morning?”
Franny looked from Prue’s face to the earring in the palm of her hand. “It wasn’t a glove, after all?”
“No. It was these earrings. They slipped from his pocket when he removed his coat.”
“Why, that foolish man! What was hethinking, carrying jewels like this in his pocket? It’s a miracle he wasn’t robbed!”
Well, in a sense he had been robbed, byher. Robbed, and then blackmailed. Oh, dear. She really had been awfully unfair to him. “I daresay he’d just come from wherever he got them. When he burst into the study, before he realized it was me sitting at the desk, he said something about Basingstoke never guessing where he’d just been—”
Franny gasped. “Lady Selina!”
“Who?”
“Lady Selina Archer, Montford’s mistress. Or Montford’s former mistress, I should say.” Franny plucked the other earring out of Prue’s hand. “Yes, these look like something she’d wear.”
“Oh. Is she very beautiful?” Of course, she must be. Montford himself was . . . well, he was quite—that is, Montford wasn’t the sort of man who’d settle for anything less than London’s most alluring ladies, that was all.
“Yes, very beautiful in that dramatic way Montford seems to prefer, but with a hardness to her, much like these stones. Goodness, I do hope he isn’t starting up with Selina again. There was a most spectacular scandal when he broke with her, you know.”
Pruedidn’tknow, nor did she want to, only, well, perhaps there was just the tiniest little niggle of curiosity in her breast. “What happened?”
Franny lowered her voice. “Montford was reportedly quite smitten with her at first—well, as much as Montford’s ever smitten with anyone. Their affair went on for months, much longer than his usual entanglements. Indeed, Giles was quite worried about Montford for a while.”
“Why should he be worried?” Surely, Montford was scoundrel enough to manage his mistress? It wasn’t as if this Lady Selina Archer was his first, or his last.
“Lady Selina has the face of an angel, but beneath those silky dark curls and big blue eyes lurks a nasty disposition. Montford found it out soon enough, of course—they always do. But you see, Selina fancied herself the next Duchess of Montford, and she was furious when he broke with her.” Franny shook her head. “I don’t know why every lady always imagines she’ll be the one to catch Montford, when no one ever has before.”
“But why was it such a scandal when they parted?” After all, aristocratic gentlemen took and then discarded mistresses every day, and no one in London ever blinked at it.
“Oh,that. He had the misfortune to be standing in front of a window when he finished with her, and she happened to have a rather heavy silver hairbrush in her hand at the time. She hurled it across the room at him.”
“My goodness! Did it hit him?”
“I’m afraid so. That is, it glanced off his forehead and smashed into the window behind him, shattering it.”
“No!”
“Yes, indeed, and if that wasn’t bad enough, poor Lord Arthur happened to be driving past at the time in his barouche with the top down, and the hairbrush . . .” Franny trailed off, wincing.
“Oh, no. Don’t say it hithim, too!”
“It did hit him. He nearly lost an eye, and I’m afraid Montford got the blame for it, though he didn’t do anything but duck. Montford does tend to get the blame for such things. I don’t deny he’s an unrepentant scoundrel, but it wasn’t his fault that time.”
She was no admirer of Montford’s—far from it—but that did seem a trifle unfair. “I daresay that cooled his ardor for Lady Selina quickly enough.”
