The Courtship (Sherbrooke Brides 5)

“Sir,” she said, “it’s purple.”

“Well, yes. It is something I have invented. You see I added some grape juice to the champagne to give it that healthy purple color. Splendid, don’t you think? All of you will try it, if you please. Except you, Spenser, since you would turn quite green and ruin the evening.”

Nobody wanted to, but everyone was polite, and so everyone drank the strange grape mixture with Spenser watching, a look of total revulsion on his face.

Alexandra cocked her head to one side as she lowered the lovely crystal flute after two small sips. “It is very different, sir. Actually, to be blunt about this, it is close to revolting. I think perhaps you should try somet

hing else to mix with the champagne.”

Lord Prith looked hopefully toward Douglas, who mournfully shook his head and kept his mouth shut. When his eyes met Sophie’s, he looked near to tears. Sophie cleared her throat, gave her husband an agonized look, and said, “I am so very sorry, sir. Perhaps it is the sort of grapes you used. Perhaps grapes from the Mediterranean region would work better.”

Helen said, “Father, it is a good try, but Alexandra is right. If I were dying I would have difficulty drinking it even if I was promised that it would bring me back.”

Lord Prith said, “Not even you, my little Nell? My daughter adores me, you see, and if she doesn’t approve, then it must be very bad indeed. But wait—Ryder, you did not give me your opinion.”

“Sir, I have found in the years I have been married that if I disagree with my wife, she refuses to give me her sweet smiles, as well as sweet other things. I am sorry, sir, but I cannot.”

“I can understand your hesitation,” Lord Prith said.“Ah, well. Flock, what was it that we called this lovely purple drink?”

“Grapagne, my lord.”

“I do like the name. It has a certain cachet. Hmmm. What do you think of apricot with champagne?”

Evidently no one thought anything of it, since there was dead silence.

Both sets of Sherbrookes left shortly, everyone ready with his assigned task.

27

IT WAS NEARLY MIDNIGHT when there was a tap on Lord Beecham’s bedchamber door.

He was naked, lying on his back in his mammoth bed, a sheet pulled to his waist, thinking about kissing the soft flesh behind Helen’s knees, something he hadn’t managed to do yet.

“Enter,” he called out.

Helen floated in—no other way to put it, he thought, stunned, watching her glide toward him. She was wearing a crimson-silk nightgown with an even darker red dressing gown over it, and strangely enough, that incredible ensemble was not the least bit tawdry. In fact, it gave a man absolutely no hint as to what treasures lay beneath.

“Go away, Helen. I mean it.”

“I will,” she said, walked right up to the bed and stopped. “Do you like it?” She did a graceful twirl and the soft slithering sounds of all that fabric would have sent him to his knees if he hadn’t been lying on his back.

“If you don’t go away I will rip it off and examine it in the morning.”

“I wore it to punish you. This is discipline, Spenser, a divine sort of discipline. What do you think—perhaps a Level Four?”

“Helen, I want you naked so badly that all I can see is far too much red stuff for me to strip off you.”

“Alexandra told me it was something a mistress would wear, a mistress who wished to seduce a very dashing, exciting, flamboyant protector. It was something, she said, that she would wear for Douglas, even though she was his wife. Sophie said Ryder would laugh his head off if she wore something like this and then he would strip it off her in a second flat.

“I thought about that. Well, I decided, we aren’t married, and we were rather intimate, and so, does that make me a mistress?”

“No. You aren’t a mistress. You are a lover. If you did not have any money, then you could be a mistress. Now leave, Helen.”

She smiled at him, turned around, and walked back to the door. She said over her shoulder, one white hand laid against the door frame, “I didn’t want you to think that I wasn’t fully aware of you.” Then her seduction fell away and she lowered her face into her hands.

He was out of his bed and was pulling her against him, all in under ten seconds. “No, love, don’t cry. I would cry, but it isn’t manly. There are certain standards that a man must uphold. Let me hold you, but please do not think lustful thoughts. Yes, all right, stop crying. We will deal with all of it, Helen. You and I are very smart indeed, and look at all our talented assistants. And now we’ve even added Ryder and Sophie Sherbrooke to our army. They are very resourceful. They have to be to survive dealing with fifteen children.

“Now there are at least ten people who know about the lamp, at least ten people who know about your blasted husband, who had better be good and dead. There are many more who know about Reverend Mathers’s murder. Word will continue to spread. Things will happen. I have never believed in secrecy. It is having everyone know everything, that’s the key. Then the truth will pop up. You’ll see, dearest. No, please don’t cry anymore.”