The Last Hellion by Loretta Chase Read Free Book Online Page A

home. Then, after a bath and change of clothes—with a sour-faced but mercifully silent Jaynes in attendance—Vere set out to give the younger man a taste of nightlife in London.
    This taste couldn't include entering the abodes of Polite Society, where hordes of marriage-hungry misses pounced upon any male with money and a pulse. The Mallorys' last hellion would rather be disemboweled with a rusty blade than spend three minutes with a lot of simpering virgins.
    The tour included instead establishments where drink and female companionship cost only coins. If this evening His Grace happened to choose places London's scribblers were known to frequent, and if Vere spent most of his time listening not to Trent but to the other customers, and if the duke came to taut attention on the two occasions he heard a certain woman's name mentioned, these matters easily escaped Sir Bertram Trent's notice.
    They wouldn't have escaped Jaynes, but he was an annoyingly sharp fellow, while Trent… was not.
    The greatest nitwit in the Northern Hemisphere was how Lord Dain had Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion
    described his brother-in-law.
    It didn't take Vere long to perceive that Beelzebub had put the case mildly, to say the least. In addition to getting himself into sentences the Almighty with the aid of all His angels would never find a way out of, Trent demonstrated a rare talent for getting under horses' hooves or directly beneath falling objects, for colliding with obstacles both human and inanimate, and for toppling from whatever he happened to be standing, sitting, or lying upon.
    Initially, all Vere felt toward him—in the brief intervals when his mind took a breather from fretting and fuming about blue-eyed dragons—was amazement, mingled with amusement. Furthering their acquaintance was the farthest thing from his mind.
    He changed his mind later in the evening.
    Not long after exiting the Westminster Pit—where they'd watched Billy the Terrier perform the astounding feat of killing a hundred rats in ten minutes, as advertised—they met up with Lord Sellowby.
    He had formed part of Dain's circle in Paris and was well acquainted with Trent.
    But then, Sellowby was acquainted with everybody and every single thing they did. He was one of England's foremost collectors and disseminators of gossip.
    After they'd exchanged greetings, he sympathetically enquired whether "Your Grace had sustained any permanent injuries as a result of today's historic encounter with Lady Grendel? In glancing over the betting book at White's, I counted fourteen separate wagers regarding the number of teeth you had lost in the—er—altercation."
    At that moment, Sellowby was in imminent danger of losing all of his teeth, along with the jawbone they were attached to.
    But before Vere could initiate hostilities a red-faced Trent burst into an indignant Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion
    rebuttal. "Broke his teeth?" he cried. "Why, it were only a tap on the chin, and anyone could see he were only playactin'—tryin' to make a joke and turn the crowd good-tempered. If you'd been there, Sellowby, you'd've seen what a mob of ugly-lookin' customers come rushin' in from everywhere, primed for head-breakin.' Not to mention you seen for yourself what my sister done in Paris, which shows how females are when they get worked up—and this one almost as tall as I am with the biggest mastiff bitch you ever seen…"
    Trent went on in this vein for several minutes, without letting Sellowby get a word in edgeways. When the bar-onet finally stopped to refill his lungs, His Lordship hastily took his leave.
    For a moment—and the first time in years—Vere was rendered speechless himself.
    He couldn't remember the last time anyone had leapt to his defense. But then, his behavior had never merited defending, he quickly reminded himself, for he was very far from saintly—about as far as a man could get without getting hanged.
    And so, he concluded, only a baconbrain like Trent