Secret Life Of A Scandalous Debutante. Bronwyn Scott

him. ‘A bracelet or a pin would be best.’ She motioned to the jeweller. ‘You can put away all the trays but these three here.’

      ‘I can see that I would have made a disaster of this on my own.’ He should not have said that. It was entirely wrong, entirely too familiar. He was joking with her as if they were friends when everyone knew a man could not be friends with a lady. He could feel his jaw tightening. It was too easy to be charmed by Lilya—by her graceful gestures, by the subtle way she’d taken control of the situation.

      She threw him a sidelong glance as if to say she doubted that, that she was on to his game of provoking her. Her eyes danced with an implicit understanding of their secret game. She turned back to study the trays. ‘This coral-and-pearl piece would be perfect.’

      It was indeed quite the perfect piece: a cameo habille, a jewel within a jewel. Beldon could find no quarrel with it. He would have selected it himself, left to his own devices. In spite of the game he played with Lilya, he did know a thing or two about jewellery. The cameo was of angelskin coral in the palest shades of pink, a tiny stone of pink jasper set on the cameo’s bosom giving it the jewel within a jewel. Eleanor would be able to wear it pinned to a gown.

      Lilya leaned forwards and spoke quietly, a finger tracing the fine lines of the cameo. ‘What better way to tell her of your feelings than that you view her as your very own jewel within a jewel, a woman you love as much for her beauty on the outside as her beauty on the inside?’

      The sentiment surprised him. Is that what women saw in jewellery? No wonder they coveted it. Did men have any idea what secret messages they were sending? More importantly, is that what he meant by giving Lady Eleanor this gift? Admittedly, Lilya’s words had something of a shocking effect on him. The sentiment she expressed was noble and fine. But could he give Lady Eleanor such a gift, knowing the message behind it to be a lie? He hoped such sentiment would be true eventually. As of today, it was not. He had no idea if Lady Eleanor was a lovely person on the inside.She was precisely what she’d been bred to be, a blank slate for her husband to write on. A blanker slate, Beldon could not imagine. He simply didn’t know. He knew only that she fit his criteria. He stilled for a moment, a horrible thought coming to him.

      What if your criteria are wrong? What if you need more? The thought was practically blasphemous. He should not even give credence to it. But there’d been a lot already today he should not have done, starting with allowing Lilya to sit down beside him. He’d played with fire and now he was getting burned, absolutely and thoroughly scorched.

      ‘What is it? You look pale all of a sudden.’ Lilya unconsciously placed a hand on his arm, her face full of concern within the frame of her bonnet. ‘I hope you’re not coming down with a spring cold. Philippa won’t forgive you if you get sick before Val’s Rose Gala. She’s spent days planning it to celebrate his new hybrid.’

      Stubbornly, Beldon pushed the traitorous idea aside. There was no room for doubt. He stood up, shaking off Lilya’s hand. ‘I’m quite fine. The cameo is perfect. Mr Brown, I would like to have it wrapped up so I may take it right away.’

      He must forgo the pleasure of such doubts. This moment of weakness was nonsense. More than one man had been the recipient of cold feet. It was part and parcel of the engagement ritual and the embracing of the unknown. He told himself it was actually nice to get cold feet. It reminded him of how important this decision was. It was worthy of being agonised over. If it was something that could be hastily done, everyone would do it.

      The jeweller returned with the cameo in a small blue velvet box tied prettily with a pale blue ribbon. ‘I’ve done it up neatly for you, my lord. The ladies put as much store in the wrapping as they do what’s actually inside the box.’ He chuckled.

      Beldon tucked the box into his coat pocket. The package was small enough not to draw attention. No one would even know he had it with him. He could carry it with him discreetly and wait for the right moment. Or, came the errant thought, he could forget about it, letting it lie unclaimed in a pocket for, oh, say ages, and no one would be the wiser.

      ‘Ahem, my lord, if I may be so bold, I happened to notice this piece in the back. We haven’t displayed it yet. I just acquired it a few days ago from a gem dealer. Since you were looking for something pink, I wanted to show it to you—it’s a bracelet of silver and tourmaline.’

      Lilya gasped, enchanted at the sight of it. ‘It’s beautiful.’

      Encouraged, the jeweller went on, ‘It is straight from Burma and the mines of Mynnamar. If I might, Miss Stefanov?’ The jeweller deftly draped the bracelet about her wrist, but struggled with the clasp.

      ‘Here, allow me,’ Beldon volunteered unthinkingly. He reached out, gently capturing her wrist, and fastened the bracelet, but not without marveling at the feel of her fine, narrow bones beneath her glove. Her wrist was as delicate and slender as the bracelet itself—a perfect match that sent a jolt of unmistakable desire straight to his male core. Beldon stepped back, hoping to distance himself.

      Lilya held up her wrist, the deep shades of the tourmaline catching the light. The bracelet slid towards her elbow. ‘It’s a little big.’

      ‘Links can be removed easily if it’s too large,’ Mr Brown put in quickly, no doubt smelling another sale in the air, or perhaps something else Beldon did not care to give name to. Beldon did not care for the suggestion Mr Brown intimated, that somehow he’d be purchasing jewellery also for Lilya. The assumption carried with it an inappropriate implication about the nature of their relationship.

      ‘It’s a beautiful piece, sir, thank you for sharing it. But I will pass. The bracelet is not in my intended’s style.’ Beldon was careful to emphasise the ‘my intended’ part. It wasn’t a lie. The bracelet was entirely wrong. It was too elegant, too subtle, too rich in colour, for an English rose like Lady Eleanor. The piece needed someone with dark hair and slightly foreign looks to be carried off. The piece needed someone like Lilya. Beldon could not imagine the bracelet on another’s wrist after seeing it on hers and that was dangerous ground indeed. It was time to go.

      ‘I am ready for sustenance, how about you?’ Beldon said, betraying none of the comparisons dominating his mind at the moment. He helped Lilya with the bracelet clasp and returned it to the jeweller. ‘May I interest you in a stop at Fortnum and Mason’s before we head home?’

      Ah, he’d chosen wisely, Beldon thought twenty minutes later. Tea was precisely the thing he needed to restore his balance. He could not recall the last time he’d enjoyed sitting down to flavoured hot water and little sandwiches so much. If he’d been alone, he would have taken refreshment at his club over on St James’s. The meal would have been more substantial, but the company less so.

      ‘You knew more about jewels than I realised. Your taste was impeccable,’ Beldon complimented as they finished their second pot. It was nearly time to go. He could not justify lingering any longer.

      Lilya blushed becomingly, but her eyes darkened and Beldon sensed she was holding an internal debate with herself. Fine. He would wait. At last, aware that he wasn’t going to fill the silence until she spoke, she said, ‘My family dealt in jewels in Negush and, before that, my grandfather was a jeweller to the sultan in Constantinople.’

      The admission stunned him into silence. She said it as naturally as if she’d said, ‘My family own dairy cows in Herefordshire’.

      ‘I never knew’ was all he could manage. Maybe he’d have to call for a third pot of tea after all. One didn’t just get up from the table and leave a comment like that unexplored.

      ‘You don’t talk of your life very much and yet I think your life has been full of fascinating experiences. Certainly, very different experiences than what one has here.’ Beldon held her eyes across the table, wanting her to see the sincerity in his own, wanting to see the veils lift from hers. The more he knew her, the more mysterious she became. There were depths here. ‘I would like to hear about them. You don’t have to forget about them simply because you’re in England now.’

      ‘It is all in the past and sometimes forgetting can be