The Secrets of the Heart. Kasey Michaels

overheard everything Lord Buxley had said. “Not a single word of this to anyone—most especially Grumble. Do you understand?”

      “What wouldn’t I understand, my lord?” Frapple countered, handing Christian his hat and walking stick. “If your friends were to know how the noose tightens, they’d refuse to ride again. Why confuse the issue with common sense?”

      Christian patted his servant and friend on the shoulder as he motioned for him to open the door once more. “I’ve no thought of running my head into a noose, Frapple,” he assured the man. “And now, as my carriage awaits, I fear I must be going.”

      “Will you still visit Little Pillington tonight?” Frapple asked.

      Christian winked, already planning his next meeting with Herbert Symington. “Frapple, how you wound me. Was there ever any doubt?”

      CHAPTER FIVE

      She was…the darling of a brilliant throng,

       adored, fêted, petted, cherished.

      Baroness Orczy

      THE SAME WEAK, FADING, late-afternoon sun that lighted St. Clair on his way to his first social engagement of the evening stole timidly through the front windows and into the small drawing room of the narrow Percy Street townhouse, falling on the furnishings some might find elegantly simple and others might condemn as rather sparse. There were four chairs scattered about the room, two of them clustered near the fireplace, a few tables uncluttered by much in the way of vases or figurines, two paintings of little merit, a gilt-edged mirror, and a single couch.