Free A Husband's Wicked Ways by Jane Feather

few minutes.
    “Yes, that’s right. Frederick told me about it. He said it had laid some groundwork for the kind of tricks he needed in the trade that became his.” Greville put a hand lightly on her arm. “It was unforgivable of me to frighten you. Please believe that I truly didn’t intend to.”
    Aurelia looked blankly at him. She could think of nothing to say. But she didn’t brush his hand aside.
    Greville said swiftly into the silence, “To tell the truth, I didn’t really think you would even be aware that you were being watched. Many people wouldn’t have felt an instant’s unease. Most people are oblivious of their surroundings much of the time. And if you hadn’t known you were being watched, you wouldn’t have been frightened.”
    “A somewhat disingenuous excuse, don’t you think, sir?” Aurelia demanded with heavy irony. She had found her tongue and her composure, and lightly and dismissively, as if it were a fallen leaf, she brushed his hand from her sleeve.
    He let his hand fall away and bowed. “I won’t intrude upon you further, ma’am.”
    “For which I am grateful.” With a twitch of her flounced gown, she turned from him and continued on her way.
    Greville watched her until she reached her destination. She had a right to her anger, he reflected somewhat ruefully. He certainly hadn’t been playing fair. But he had learned something useful. Aurelia had the necessary instincts. Instincts that could be honed. But did she have the inclination? Or the willingness to consider incentives that might overcome a lack of inclination?
     

    Aurelia spent the next two hours wrestling with her anger, which was directed as much at Frederick as at Colonel Falconer. What right had Frederick had to discuss something as intimate as those childhood games with anyone, let alone the man he worked for in such dubious circumstances. By sharing such an intimacy it seemed to her that he had given tacit permission to the colonel to use that information. But what was he usingit for? Some cat-and-mouse game, just for the sake of it? That seemed ludicrous. Unless the man was deranged, and that, she decided, was a distinct possibility.
    She forced her mind back to the conversation at the luncheon table. “How many new beds did you say the infirmary building will provide, Cecily?”
    “Sir John Soane says eighty,” Cecily responded. “Little enough, barely a drop in the ocean these days, with the number of casualties coming back from the war.”
    “Oh, they’re all over the streets,” Letitia declared with a fastidious shudder. “Begging for a penny, or a crust. One can’t walk along Piccadilly anymore without being accosted. It’s a disgrace. They look so dreadful, with no legs, or arms, and those filthy bandages. They should be put somewhere out of sight. Who needs to be reminded of those horrors?”
    “Then I’m sure you’ll make a very generous contribution to the infirmary, Letitia,” Cornelia said with a silky smile. “It will take some of them out of your view.”
    “Yes, indeed. I shall put you down for five hundred guineas, Letitia,” Cecily declared briskly. “If you’re lucky, such a sum might clear one side of Piccadilly of such offensive sights.”
    Letitia blinked a little as she sipped her wine. Sometimes it seemed to her that she was being excluded from a joke. “I shall have to ask Oglethorpe,” she said, a mite plaintively. “Such a sum would rob me of most of a quarter’s allowance.”
    “I’m sure you’ll find a way to persuade Lord Oglethorpe to assist such a worthy cause,” Aurelia said, smiling. “Everyone knows you have him wrapped around your little finger, Letitia.”
    Letitia bridled, looked smug, and murmured, “Well, that’s as may be, but I do have a trick or two up my sleeve when it comes to persuasion.”
    “I fear I can manage little,” Countess Lessingham said with an apologetic smile. “You must forgive me, ladies, but so much of my own resources go to