The Postilion (The Masqueraders #2) - S.M. LaViolette Page 0,11
face and glanced at Claire, who was looking paler than she’d been when he’d arrived.
“Shall I ring for tea?” he asked her when Ria stopped talking long enough for him to get a question in.
Claire opened her mouth.
“Not on my account,” Ria said before Claire could answer. “As much as I’d love to stay and enjoy a comfortable coze with you, my lady,” she cut the countess an insincere smile before turning back to Jago, “I just popped in to welcome dear Jago back to the neighborhood. I knew you’d not want to stand on ceremony with one of your oldest friends.” She lowered her lashes and a delicate peachy stain washed across her high cheekbones.
He’d forgotten her astounding ability to summon either a blush or tears on demand. Even at nineteen she’d been a force of nature. Lord only knew what new tricks she’d learned in the intervening years.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, Jago, but I am now a widow.” Her lush lower lip trembled and she blinked rapidly, as if struggling to contain her emotions.
Jago almost clapped. But instead, he said, “You have my deepest condolences.”
“Although I have cast off my blacks I will always be in mourning for my dearest Henry.”
Her dearest Henry? Even half-way across the country he’d read stories of the merry dance Ria had led her elderly, wealthy husband—a man whose death had left her one of the richest women in England.
“I’ve thought of you often over the years, Jago, and I’ve so regretted—” She bit her lip, as if she would like to say more, but then her eyes slid not so subtly to Claire, the source of her constraint.
The countess noticed the gesture and her pale cheeks flushed.
Jago stood. “Let me walk you out,” he offered, already fatigued by her theatrics and annoyed by the way she was treating Claire.
“Oh, yes. Why, just listen to me—chattering when I really must be on my way. How kind you are to remind me, dear Jago.”
Jago ignored her arch look and smiled warmly down at his sister-in-law. “I’ll return shortly, Claire.”
Ria waited until they were in the hallway before tucking her hand under his arm. “You can’t imagine how delighted I was to hear you were back, Jago,” she said, walking closer than necessary.
“I’m sure I can’t. You know I’ve always lacked for imagination.”
She gave a low, bawdy chuckle. “Oh darling, you can’t still be angry with me, can you?”
Jago stopped in the middle of entry hall. Vermillion, amber, and emerald light from the stained-glass windows that flanked the front door bathed her glorious face.
Just like the windows—a pre-Henry VIII relic from when Lenshurst had been a monastery—Gloria Valera was a work of art. But there was nothing holy about her. Quite the opposite; she was an unholy menace to any man’s peace of mind.
“Angry?” Jago repeated as he stared into eyes that could suck a man’s soul from his body, even if he were vigilant. “Why would I possibly be angry, Gloria? Because I killed my best friend over you?”
Jago’s anger stunned him. It had been eighteen years. Eighteen years. When would he be free of his fury and shame when it came to Brian’s death?
Ria merely looked amused. “Oh no darling, I didn’t mean any of that. I meant because I made you love me and then broke your little-boy heart.” She laughed throatily at whatever she saw on his face.
Jago had to bite his tongue as he escorted her down the front steps.
Her liveried footman had opened the door to her carriage and Jago gladly handed her inside.
She took her time arranging her lush body on the cream leather seat, her sinuous movements those of a cat, her lashes lowered and her mobile features shifting into an almost convincing expression of longing when her eyes met his.
“I’m so delighted that you have come back, Jago.”
“I am not the same man I was eighteen years ago, Ria.”
Her lips curved at his unwitting use of her pet name and her hot eyes travelled over his body with an intimacy that was so shocking his face heated. “Well, thank goodness for that, darling. I have no interest in a mere boy”
Jago was no prude—he’d had more than a few lovers over the years—but his amours had never been emotional in nature—Ria herself had seen to that, decades ago. He wasn’t a fool; he knew his appearance led women—especially younger and more impressionable women—to believe that he was some sort of storybook hero.