A Lady Dares by Bronwyn Scott Read Free Book Online

utter.
    The horror in Charles Bradford’s eyes was so exaggerated it was almost comical and it would have been, too, if it wasn’t aimed at the one man she’d pinned all her hopes on.
    ‘Don’t you know, Miss Sutton? He isn’t received.’

Chapter Five
    ‘I was not under the impression craftsmen were in the habit of being received at all,’ Elise answered coolly, some irrational part of her leaping to Dorian’s defence. Perhaps it was simply that she wanted to defend the shipyard and her own judgement, or her brother’s judgement for that matter. He’d been the one to recommend Dorian.
    Charles smiled indulgently. ‘Oh, he’s not a craftsman, not by birth anyway.’
    ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to explain that.’ Elise mustered all the bravado she could. With a label like the
Scourge of Gibraltar
she could guess the reasons without the specifics, though details would be nice.
    Charles set his jaw, looking fiercer thanshe’d ever seen him, a look at odds with his usually calm demeanour. ‘Of course you don’t know and understandably so. It’s hardly a topic of discussion worthy of a lady. I will say only this: he’s not fit company for you.’
    The fervency in Charles’s eyes should have warmed her even if his sentiments did not. She ought to overlook his condescension in light of its motives: he was putting her honour first. He was thinking of her, concerned about who she associated with, even if the tone with which that care was voiced sounded a bit high in the instep. Her father had been a self-made peer, knighted for his efforts, and Charles’s own father was a baronet, neither family far removed from the efforts of work that had attained such positions. Yet she could not warm to Charles’s efforts with more than polite kindness. Her own body and mind were still engaged in recalling a less-decent gentleman with blunt manners and a blind eye for scandal.
    ‘I appreciate your concern, although it’s hardly fair to tell me he’s unsuitable and then not tell me why.’ As if she needed reasons other than the ones Dorian had already provided this very afternoon with his unorthodoxkissing episode. Out of reflex and remembrance, Elise’s eyes dropped ever so briefly to Charles’s lips. She couldn’t imagine Charles behaving so outrageously. The thought was not well done of her. There could be no true comparison between the two. Charles was all a gentleman should be and Dorian Rowland simply was not. Charles would be eminently more preferable. Wouldn’t he? He was precisely the sort of man her brother wanted her to find: attractive, steady and financially secure. But even with all these credentials, Elise couldn’t help but feel Charles would still come out lacking.
    Charles seemed to hold an internal debate with himself, his features suddenly relaxing, decision made. He leaned across the table in confidentiality. ‘He is Lord Ashdon’s son, second son,’ he offered in hushed tones as if that explained it all.
    It certainly explained some, like how William might have encountered him at an Oxford house party. Even after William’s explanation, she’d been hard pressed to believe William had stumbled across a master shipbuilder in the course of his usual social routine. But the one word her brain kept comingback to was
scandal
. It was the very last thing she needed. Her father’s death had been sensational, but not scandalous. Dorian Rowland, however, was both. If society had seen him today, one of their own, half-naked and toting tools around the shipyard, shouting orders, it would be outraged. Then again, it already was. If Charles could be believed, Dorian’s transgressions preceded this latest. This venture into the shipyard was just one of many escapades for him. But she would be the one who suffered.
    It was slowly coming to her that Dorian Rowland simply didn’t care who he perpetrated this fraud on. He could have told her who he was and he hadn’t. He’d let her believe he was a