A Gentleman By Any Other Name by Kasey Michaels Read Free Book Online Page A

they meant, what they felt—if, indeed, they felt anything. Miss Carruthers was more like his sisters, none of whom suffered fools gladly.
    Which, he realized, would make him the current fool, wouldn’t it? “Very well, we’ll dispense with the interview now. Perhaps you’d like to hear more about Becket Hall? After all, you will be living there.”
    â€œFor how long, sir?” Julia asked, her curiosity overcoming both her uncomfortably real nervousness and her temper.
    â€œFor you, Miss Carruthers? For as long as you can stomach the place, I imagine. For Alice, until she is grown and ready for her season. I don’t wish for her to grow up in London, and my own estate is manned only by a skeleton staff, which is why I’ve arranged for her to be with the family. I’ll visit her, of course.”
    â€œReally? And how long has it been since you’ve visited Becket Hall, sir? Alice has told me she’s never been there.”
    Chance shifted in his chair. “She was taken there as an infant. Once. My wife didn’t care for…for the area.”
    Julia had her own thoughts on what the man’s wife hadn’t cared for, but she’d begun to understand that saying what she thought wasn’t as accepted by society gentlemen as it had been by her father. Was his family horribly rustic, that his fine society wife couldn’t like them? If so, Julia knew she already liked them, sight unseen. “Romney Marsh can sometimes seem like a separate country, not part of England at all.”
    Chance’s mind went back to his conversation with the War Office minister’s assistant. “I’ll agree that many of the inhabitants don’t seem to believe they are a part of the war going on with France.”
    Julia nodded. “The Owlers. You are referring to them, aren’t you? But they smuggle to survive, Mr. Becket.”
    â€œI understand their reasons, Miss Carruthers, and even sympathize, if that statement doesn’t startle you overmuch,” Chance told her. “We only wish they could understand our concerns. Besides the lost revenue, spies and information have been traded back and forth across the Channel with the unwitting help of the Owlers, as you call them. That has to stop.”
    Julia bristled. She knew the history of smuggling along the Kent and Sussex coastlines. She’d daily drunk tea left as a gift after the smugglers had used her father’s church to store their haul before moving it inland. “Then the government has to do more than say it understands. Have the king raise the price paid for wool, sir. That would be my suggestion.”
    Chance smiled, knowing he was speaking with a woman who’d been raised believing smuggling was nothing more or less than a fact of life. “Don’t bite off my head, Miss Carruthers. It’s my solution, as well, but I am here to tell you that a similar suggestion has already been offered and refused. And for good reason. We’re already strapped financing a war, remember?”
    Julia shrugged, holding back a smile. How she adored a lively conversation, even a lively argument. “Better a war than an insurrection, sir. Or don’t you think it will come to that? My father worried that one day we will suffer France’s fate if we don’t learn the lessons of their revolution.”
    Chance downed his mug of ale, good country ale made with Kent hops. “‘To write this act of independence we must have a white man’s skin for parchment, his skull for an inkwell, his blood for ink and a bayonet as pen.’”
    Julia blinked, taken aback by the bloodthirsty statement. “I beg your pardon?”
    â€œI was quoting Boisrond-Tonnerre, Miss Carruthers, not making a statement of my own. The words were said by Tonnerre, who served as one of Jean-Jacques Dessalines’ lieutenants, back in 1804. That’s when Haiti declared its independence after a