Page 14 of The Duke of Seduction
Matilda’s eyes widened the barest fraction, and her lips parted briefly before she pressed them closed. Without another word, she turned and left with Mrs. Law.
“Have a good afternoon,” Beck called after them. He went to where Cartwright leaned over the broken carriage with Matilda’s coachman. No, not Matilda any longer,Lady Fairwell. “Can it be repaired?”
Cartwright looked up from where he knelt on the street. “I think so, my lord. We’ll do our best to get it fixed posthaste. Philip and Fred are on their way with tools.”
Beck knew the situation was in good hands with his grooms. “Excellent. Let me know if you need anything.” He turned and walked back to the house. Gage beat him there, opening the door for him.
Once inside, Gage closed the door behind them. “Your latest paramour, I presume? Lady Fairwell, I mean, not Mrs. Law. The latter would be quite a shock.”
“Why? I’m confident Mrs. Law has amusements outside her marriage. Have you noticed the way she looks at you?” Beck sent Gage a sideways glance tinged with humor. His butler, a widower, was quite good-looking. He drew stares from all classes wherever he went.
Gage rolled his eyes. “I meant because you wouldn’t give her the time of day. She is not the sort of woman you pass time with.”
No, she wasn’t. He detested the gossips and the purveyors of opinion and judgment. “Yes, Lady Fairwell was my latest paramour.”
“Was, my lord? I take it you weren’t writing songs about her this morning? Or poems about her last night?”
“Yes, past tense. It was a short-lived affair, which suits me fine.” In fact, he hadn’t written a thing about Matilda. Last night’s subject matter, as it so often was, had been a concoction of his imagination—a bluestocking whose attributes were ignored to everyone else’s detriment.
He suddenly realized she was perhaps not entirely a fabrication.
Shaking thoughts of Lady Lavinia from his head, he turned. “Back to my correspondence.”
As Beck entered his study, he felt a pull to the guitar once more. A ballad began to fill his mind, but it wasn’t yet formed. He’d let it compose and cure, and later, he’d write it down. Unless it flitted away, as so many ideas did.
Not every notion was worthy of words. But the best of them could create…magic.
