The Postilion (The Masqueraders #2) - S.M. LaViolette Page 0,141

investigation of the duke’s family, he knew that the initials stood for Cordelia Frances Page.

He also knew she was the Duchess of Falkirk’s much younger sister and had come to live with her sister several years before. Cordelia and her sisters had grown up in a genteel but poor country manse not far from the Duke of Falkirk’s country seat.

Cordelia was close to John’s age—whatever his exact age was, he wasn’t really sure—and had no beau in either London or at the duke’s country house, where she spent most of her time when she wasn’t launching a niece into society.

He ran his thumb over the raised needlework. It had been only the work of a moment to pluck the handkerchief from where she kept it tucked in the wrist of her left glove. While he was not a particularly skilled cly faker he had done his share of dipping when he’d been a lad, until he’d grown too large and conspicuous to work as a pickpocket.

Tiny violets and even smaller green leaves encircled the initials. The workmanship was exquisite. Before John realized what he was doing, he raised the handkerchief to his nose and inhaled. The small cloth did have a scent, although not of violets. The smell was sharply aromatic but John could not identify it. To his untutored nose the fragrance reminded him of lavender, but not quite as floral. And it certainly was nothing so cloying as rose or lilac. He inhaled deeply and held the breath in his lungs, savoring it like he would a fine brandy.

He knew women of her class—when they were not shopping or attending balls or parties—spent their time employed in activities like needlework.

But not the type of needlework his Mam had done—stitching garments for a tailor by the dim light of a tallow candle until her eyes were too weak to see, her fingers too bent and stiff to ply a needle.

John shoved aside the broken shard of memory and pictured instead the woman who must have labored on this tiny square of fabric.

John had spent years with nothing other than his own mind and imagination to entertain himself. And when a man lived among criminals, he learned to pay attention to details or he didn’t make it to a very great age.

John’s past had left him skilled at constructing mental images of any person, place, or thing. More than once in his life his power to recreate with his imagination was all that had stood between him and the yawning maw of insanity.

Before his ex-employer, Stephen Worth—had taught him how to read, his imagination had been the lifeboat his mind had clung to when he’d been in such physical agony that he’d not wanted to go on living.

It had been what remained of light and life and color when he’d believed he would die in the dark belly of a convict ship.

It had kept him going when he’d been so alone, so stripped of everything he was—like an onion that had been peeled layer by layer by layer—that nothing remained.

Right now, John used his formidable imagination to picture Cordelia Page. He reconstructed her face until she hung in his mind as clearly as a portrait in some rich nob’s gallery.

The sun had been at his back and had thrown her face into relief. Her eyes were a kaleidoscope of greens and browns with a hint of gold. But it wasn’t the color that made a man take notice so much as their shape and the expression in them. Large and slightly tilted, they seemed to be smiling.

Even when they had looked up at John.

People generally did not smile when they looked at him.

Her lips were not bow-shaped like those so admired by poets, but full and mobile. Although she probably didn’t know it, hers was a mouth made for sensual pleasures.

They’d stood so close that he’d seen small brackets at each side—lines from smiling.

Her figure was not the slim, fragile type so admired by the ton, but then he was not a member of that august assemblage.

The word to describe her figure was voluptuous—his preferred type of female body. He could imagine her in his arms and had done so far more often and far more vividly than was comfortable for his mental state.

Her wide hazel eyes had swept his cheeks and taken in his scars with an expression of cool contemplation that had enflamed him. It wasn’t the look he normally saw on women’s faces. No, the normal reaction