The Winterley Scandal. Elizabeth Beacon

men lust for me so deeply they can’t fight it is wonderful, but jewels never fade. I don’t intend to be deprived of a single stone, and they will never make me feel less than beautiful, however old I get.

      So had written the woman who would never get much older than she had been when she’d made that last entry in the diary.

      Colm’s mouth twisted in distaste as he re-read her self-centred ramblings, but he felt a spark of regret for a vivid life cut short all the same. He was sorry Lord Farenze would have to read his late wife’s words and wonder what made her as she was. Colm had no idea how it felt to walk in the Viscount’s expensive shoes, but he didn’t envy him the memory of a wife no one man could satisfy. Her words told him enough about Pamela to know she would have left Colm’s father for another lover, however deeply Lord Chris adored her. Colm was almost glad Lord Chris hadn’t lived to watch the woman who cost him so dearly walk away without a backward look.

      Emotions he didn’t want to imagine underlay the dark fascination of a duke’s youngest son and the runaway wife of a very young peer. If he let himself dwell on such wild passions he might feel an echo of them for some unsuspecting female. A picture of Miss Winterley looking horrified as he poured out his insatiable desire for her made him flinch, then smile at the next image of her speechless with shocked surprise that he could feel anything at all, let alone that. She was so unlike her dam, Colm felt guilty for misjudging her last night and uneasy about the thunder of passionate need in his own veins as he watched her ghost into his temporary lair breathless and far too desirable for her own good before they had even spoken to each other.

      * * *

      Eve had given her father time to read all Pamela’s letters and diaries before confronting him the day after she met Mr Carter in Green Park. It must make painful reading for him and she doubted her mother’s self-centred outpourings shone much light on what had made her long for a succession of ever wilder lovers.

      ‘You really won’t let me read a word of my mother’s papers, will you?’ Eve challenged as she followed him into his study after breakfast.

      ‘I wish I could burn the lot right now, so there would be no risk of you or anyone else ever reading a word of her selfish drivel,’ her father said with a preoccupied frown at the locked drawer of his desk where she guessed the diaries were sitting like a row of fat little grenades that could be so destructive in the wrong hands she shuddered at the thought of it.

      ‘Then why don’t you?’ she asked with a nod at the fire burning steadily in the grate on this fine but chilly morning.

      ‘Because it isn’t right to deprive that boy of a chance,’ he murmured as if he was fighting the urge to do it anyway.

      ‘What boy? Oh, you mean Lord Christopher Hancourt’s son, I suppose. I thought he was dead; nobody has heard of him for years and his family never talk about him or the little girl I remember someone mentioning once.’

      ‘Their father spent the lad’s rightful inheritance on your mother and I can’t believe that fool was besotted enough to simply hand over all those jewels to her. She knew the Lambury Jewels weren’t even his to give, but she seduced and sulked as only she knew how until she got them out of him. There isn’t a single word of remorse about the boy and his sister in the books and papers Carter handed over.’

      ‘It would be beneath him to hold back a single letter of hers once he made you that promise,’ Eve argued against Mr Carter holding something over them. Her father’s acute gaze focused on her as if he was trying to read her thoughts and feelings about a man she didn’t even like. Of course she didn’t feel anything for the stiff-necked idiot, how could she? She still felt the need to affirm his honesty for some reason. ‘He wouldn’t keep anything that didn’t belong to him,’ she added.

      ‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ her father murmured so low she wondered if she was mistaken. ‘Nothing Pamela did should shame you, love,’ he said out loud and with such sadness and concern in his eyes Eve felt guilty about reminding him of those dark days in both their lives, not that she could remember them.

      ‘Nor you, Papa,’ she said. ‘She did enough damage when she was alive. Please don’t agonise over her sins now she’s dead. The memory of them kept you and darling Chloe apart for years, so don’t fret about things she never felt a second’s worth of unease about now.’

      ‘Yet if I burn these books I might deprive that boy of the better life and we Winterleys have done enough damage in that quarter already. If there’s any chance those jewels she writes about so gleefully can be found and I destroy a clue to where they are, then I shall be the one in need of a few scruples and not Pamela.’

      ‘We must find the man Lord Chris’s son must be by now and help him as best we can then. If that’s what it takes to make you forget all the evil Lord Chris and Pamela did between them, we have no choice.’

      ‘Any gossip now sleeping safely might wake up and bite you if he or his sister come forward, love,’ he warned with a brooding look Eve couldn’t quite read.

      ‘Don’t you think I’m strong enough to ignore such poisonous gossip by now?’

      ‘Sometimes I wonder if you’re not too strong, Eve. If I had only worked my way past Pamela and caught your stepmother ten years before I did, you and Verity would have had easier childhoods. I was a fool not to seize the day and your stepmother a lot sooner than I did.’

      ‘Well, there’s no denying Chloe is perfect for you in every way my mother never was, but Verity and I did very well with one of you each for the ten years you two spent apart. We do even better now you’re together and happy, instead of apart and secretly miserable, but there’s no need to mourn what we didn’t have because you were stubborn as a rock, Papa. We were both very much loved and cared for even before you and Chloe let yourselves be happy together.’

      ‘I’m glad you know we love you, but are you sure you’re prepared for the old gossip to be stirred up if I find Hancourt and help him search for any remnants of his inheritance that might be lying around unattended?’

      Eve had had to prove over and over again how unlike her mother she was when she made her debut in society. The idea of facing that ordeal again was daunting and made her pause for a moment. No, peace wasn’t worth having if it came from playing the coward, she decided. She would have to be more cautious than ever about dark corridors and deserted ladies’ withdrawing rooms, but the sneaky thought that meeting an intriguing and gruff young gentleman at the end of her last adventure made it almost worthwhile was nonsensical, wasn’t it?