The Secret to Seduction by Julie Anne Long Read Free Book Online

cleverness of her strategy, and became peculiarly speculative. It seemed he had just realized what she might be about. He smiled a little…and good heavens, it was a bit…well, sultry.
    “I would have arrived sooner, you see, but our carriage suffered a small accident,” he told her. He was certainly helping himself to a good deal of eggs, she noticed. Possibly he didn’t get enough to eat at the vicarage. “I’ve only just arrived an hour or so ago.”
    “Oh, dear! A carriage accident? Are you sound?”
    “I am perfectly sound, thank you for your concern.” He paused in his dishing of eggs and turned to study her a moment longer, and a glimmer of sorts seemed to move over his eyes. He lowered his voice a bit more. “Sabrina…might I beg a private meeting with you?”
    She loved the intimacy of his lowered voice and his intense gaze. House parties were most definitely exciting, she decided then.
    Sabrina tried not to glance over her shoulder, where Lady Mary and her husband and Mr. Wyndham were happily devouring their breakfasts. Presumably Sophia Licari was having a late morning lie-in.
    Perhaps with The Libertine himself, as he wasn’t present at breakfast, either.
    She mentally brushed aside the very idea of it. One conversation about seduction, and see how quickly her thoughts fell into his way of thinking? He was a dangerous man, indeed.
    “Certainly, Geoffrey.”
    “There is a sitting room all done in yellow in the back of the house. I recall it from when I was a boy. Follow the black-and-white-tiled hallway to the small table with the gilded turned legs, and turn right. If you find yourself in a gallery of sorts featuring portraits, you’ve gone too far. Once we’ve finished breakfast, excuse yourself and wait fifteen minutes. You will find me there.”
    She was a bit startled by how briskly and efficiently he planned what essentially amounted to an assignation. But as intrigue was unfamiliar to her, she found it quietly thrilling, too.
    “Have you spoken to the earl about our—” Sabrina corrected herself just in time. “Your mission, then?”
    They now stood across from each other in the room Geoffrey had suggested. Yellow indeed. Wallpaper that reminded Sabrina of eggs—white and yolk-yellow—striped the wall, and made her a little dizzy. She looked at Geoffrey instead, because he typically made her a little dizzy, too, in a pleasanter way.
    Geoffrey’s gaze was wandering the yellow sitting room, over velvet, marble, ormolu, rosewood, up the walls to the endlessly high ceiling. The filigreed hands of a grand clock glided forward to land upon eleven. It pinged out the hour tastefully.
    “I’ve an appointment with him tomorrow to discuss it,” Geoffrey finally said. “He’s expecting it.”
    “As formal as that, are you?” she teased. “He’s your cousin. Shouldn’t you just discuss it on a stroll to review the horses, or whatever it is men enjoy doing together?”
    Geoffrey’s eyes returned to hers. “We…aren’t very close now, I’m afraid.” The words seemed carefully chosen. His expression was odd. As though he were trying with some difficulty to disguise a stomachache.
    “Were you ever close?”
    Geoffrey didn’t answer; suddenly he was more restless than Sabrina had ever seen him. Gingerly he picked up a small vase splashed with delicate pale pink roses, turned it in his hand. Worth a fortune, and would break if one sneezed, no doubt. A lovely, unthinkably frivolous thing, the result of someone’s painstaking labor to create.
    All for displaying flowers.
    Geoffrey settled the vase carefully back onto the stand that seemed specifically made just for it.
    At the vicarage, Sabrina usually stuffed bowls and jars with flowers, when there was time for such frivolity. Being poor required so much time. All the careful economies, the picking of threads out of dresses to resew them with the worn and faded side inside, using one poor chicken as thoroughly as possible, from eggs to