More Than a Mistress by Ann Lethbridge Read Free Book Online

murmured.
    Her heart lurched.
    Money. He meant the money. ‘It will be waiting for you,’ she said with a calm she did not feel.
    She acknowledged his sweeping bow with an inclination of her head.
    He closed the door softly behind him. She sat still, imagining him climbing the stairs. Would he walk slowly? Lingering, hoping she might follow? Or would he run, glad of his escape? Or had it all been one great joke?
    Did he know she was his for the taking had he persisted? Did he know she’d lie awake all night, reliving his touch on her flesh?
    Shame sent more heat to her face. Her stomach fell away. Would she never learn? She inhaled a deep breath, pushed to her feet and looked up at Grandfather’s portrait beside the hearth. A gentler one than that in the other room. ‘I certainly made a pig’s ear of that, didn’t I?’ No doubt more scandal would attach to her name when he gossiped to his friends.
    Thank God, he would be gone in the morning.

Chapter Four
    V oices. Female voices. As consciousness returned, Charlie lay still, eyes closed, his cold naked body rigid. One movement would be his downfall. A laugh chilled his soul.
    ‘Do you think he tupped the missus?’
    ‘Why else would she bring him home?’
    Odd. Charlie cracked an eyelid. Peered at the two women at the end of a monstrous four-poster bed and remembered. He was in Yorkshire, not a war-torn field in Europe. He let go of his breath, relaxing his body.
    The women were dressed modestly, like chambermaids, one a chubby young blonde with an inquisitive expression, the other a sallow-faced brunette past the first blush of youth. Their eyes perused his body as boldly as a farmer sizing up a bull at the market.
    Flipping the sheet over his groin, Charlie sat up and smiled. ‘Good morning, ladies.’
    The blonde one squeaked. The other put her hands on her hips. ‘Sorry, your lordship. We didn’t mean to wake you. Your fire is made up and we stopped to admire the view.’
    ‘You should draw t’curtain,’ the younger one said defensively, ‘if you don’t want us looking.’
    He choked back a laugh. Miss Draycott had the most unusual of staff. But then there was nothing about Merry Draycott that was usual.
    The dark one lowered her lashes a fraction and her gaze to the sheet, which hid little of the evidence of his morning arousal. ‘I could help you out with that for a shilling.’
    ‘I wouldn’t charge you at all,’ the blonde said, licking her lips and smiling. ‘I’d bounce on that any day of t’week.’
    Good God, what sort of house was this? Charlie tried to keep his jaw off his chest. ‘Thank you, but no.’
    The hopeful smile faded. ‘You won’t say nowt to missus, will you? About us waking you. We are supposed to be quiet.’
    With a sense of unreality, Charlie shook his head. ‘Thank you for the fire.’
    The older of the two narrowed her gaze. ‘How come you left all the candles burning? Not scared of the dark, are you?’
    Scared didn’t come close to describing the insidious panic he felt in the hours before dawn. He grinned. ‘I fell asleep reading.’ He gestured to the book on the night table, placed there in case of such questions.
    ‘Waste of good beeswax, that is,’ she muttered and flounced out of the room.
    The other girl followed, lugging the coal bucket and a dustpan and brush.
    Charlie collapsed against the pillows and let out a laugh. There was no mistaking the sort of fires those women preferred to light and it had nothing to do with hearths and coals.
    He should have guessed from the style of Merry’s dress and her lapses of speech that the damned woman was a brothel keeper.
    An abbess. And one with enemies? Overnight he’d been thinking about that broken axle.
    Another look at her carriage was required, but this latest piece of information added to his suspicions about her supposed accident. It wasn’t one.
    He glanced around the room. The candles augmented by light from the window illuminated a carved and