Beyond Rubies (Daughters of Sin 4)

“Miss Hazlett has a remarkable eye for detail.” Mr. Tunley sounded proud. “I’d forgotten just how clever she was. It’s been too long since she visited us in London.”

Silverton looked at Lord Ludbridge to ask him a question, but his Lordship was thoroughly absorbed by Miss Hazlett’s drawing. Indeed, he was shaking his head slowly with the greatest of admiration. “The necklace...why, it is composed of rubies and diamonds in a most unusual configuration.” He put his finger on the paper and then traced the outline of the young woman’s face. “Miss Hazlett, I had no idea you were so gifted.” He hesitated. “May I...may I have it? I would like to buy it from you. Yes, indeed. You see, I’m looking for a necklace very similar to this one. You’d be doing me a great service.”

A little bemused, Miss Hazlett tore off the page, and when the performance came to an end, Lord Ludbridge accompanied Silverton backstage while the others cited another engagement.

“And so you came to see me one last time.” Kitty almost purred the words as she greeted him, and Silverton was conscious of the most extraordinarily acute stab of something—part desire, part pain. “You are so sweet, Lord Silverton. And I’m delighted to make Lord Ludbridge’s acquaintance,” she added, bobbing a curtsey.

“Perhaps you’d join us for supper,” Silverton asked, wishing he didn’t sound so hopeful. He desperately wanted Kitty to himself for just a crucial couple of hours, and was glad Nash was not in evidence, which suggested he might be on the town and happy for Kitty to be left to her own devices.

To his disappointment, she shook her head. “After I’ve changed I’m meeting Nash at Mistress Kate’s for supper and dancing.”

“But if you won’t come out with me, I won’t see you again before you and Lord Nash are married on Saturday.”

“You sound so disappointed, Lord Silverton.” She tapped him on the shoulder with her fan, before enveloping herself in an opera cape and donning a rakish feathered headdress and excusing herself with a nod. “Good evening, gentlemen.

“Lord Nash isn’t going to escort you?”

Kitty shook her head. “Sometimes I’m very late if Mr. Lazarus wants to rehearse parts of the play. But Madame Kate’s is so close to the theater, and nobody bothers me along the way.”

Silverton was shocked. “Surely you are mistaken for—”

“Oh, I give them short shrift. Don’t worry, Lord Silverton. I walk through the Haymarket most nights, and nothing has ever happened.”

“Well, I shall escort you tonight, Kitty. I insist.”

Kitty smiled and even looked pleased, he was glad to note. She inclined her head. “I’ll accept your offer, since I shall be wearing the very beautiful ruby necklace Nash gave me as a betrothal gift. Even though it won’t be seen when I’m outdoors, I shall be glad of your protection.” She patted her throat. “Look at the workmanship of that centerpiece ruby with the tiny clusters of diamonds all around it. Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Who did you say gave you that necklace, Miss La Bijou?” Lord Ludbridge asked, and Kitty replied with pride and a pointed look at Silverton, “Lord Nash. He’s very generous, don’t you agree?”

“I say, are you feeling all right, Teddy?” Silverton asked. “Looking a bit green around the gills.”

His friend reassured them he was perfectly fine before he excused himself as he was due to make an appearance at Lady Marks’s Riverside Soiree, while Silverton was determined to make the most of the short time he had before Kitty met Lord Nash.

“Perhaps I could entice you to stop for a short while to share a drink with me, Kitty,” he entreated. “This will be the last time I might see you before you are married, and there’s something I’d like to ask you.”

She stopped amid the milling crowds on a corner beneath a lamp above which flapped a sign for a tavern called The Green Frog. “That’s far too enticing, Lord Silverton, so I’ll have to decline. You can say what you need to say, here.”

“Enticing? Is that what you said? Too enticing to spend time with me, yet you use that as a reason not to spend what I’d intended to be a very special moment together, Kitty?”

“Of course, my Lord. You want to persuade me not to marry Lord Nash, and perhaps you’ll even kiss me, and I really shan’t like that because the other night just reminded me how very much I like kissing you, and I can’t be reminded of such things when I’m to marry Nash.”

“How can you marry Lord Nash if you have feelings for me, Kitty?”

Kitty shrugged. “Perhaps, if you were courting Miss Bunting and hoping to make her your wife because she was a perfect candidate, you might still have preferred the idea of kissing me; yet obviously Miss Bunting offered what you felt you wanted and needed.”

She started walking again, and Silverton had to lengthen his stride to keep up.

“Kitty!” In a burst of feeling, he gripped her hand and swung her around to face him. “What you said was all but telling me you prefer me to Nash.”

“Exactly.” She sent him another of her engaging, beatific smiles. “But I like Nash very much, and Nash is making me an offer that will give me my heart’s desire.” She held out her hand and tapped her betrothal ring. “Marriage. Security. To a man who pleases me very much, and has the power to make me happy for the rest of my days.”

“So you’ve discovered he isn’t, in fact, the man foretold as your destiny by the gypsy fortune-teller?”

Kitty chuckled. “I was rather fanciful for rather a long time. No, I don’t believe in that sort of thing anymore, though it was good fortune I did when I met Nash otherwise things would never have developed the way they have.”

“Perhaps if you hadn’t persisted with those fanciful ways we would have been together, Kitty.”

She shrugged. “And I’d not be contemplating the happiest day of my life in three days’ time.”