A Notorious Countess Confesses (PG7) by Julie Anne Long Read Free Book Online Page A

worth of being showered with all of those things didn’t fade from memory overnight.
    The letter from her brother Seamus first. His handwriting was swashbuckling, with great fat loops and spiky heights. The fact that he’d managed to send a letter at all meant that he’d at least enough money for a stamp, and this filled her both with hope and dread, for Seamus’s jobs tended to be uncertain, often not entirely legal, affairs. He was charming enough, and handsome enough, to cajole his way into a new one with regularity. Some of his other tendencies—a yearning for variety, a fondness for women—tended to interfere with the keeping of the jobs.
    You will be surprised, dear sister of mine, to know I have a Job! You will not be surprised to hear I’ve need of a new suit of clothes and lodging or I shall not be able to keep it, and I haven’t any blunt for that. I feel certain you will pay the cost to avoid having me live with you permanently. But we’d have such fun! Ha ha!
    I vow to repay you one day. VOW.
    With much love (and you know I do love you),
    Seamus
    She knew that he did, damn his worthless eyes. She would send him money because she loved him, too, and was fresh out of lectures. And God knows she didn’t want him living with her though she missed him.
    There was one from her sister Cora, in Killarney.
    When she broke the seal, something spilled into her palm. Silky and fragile as a cobweb, it was a lock of red-gold hair from the newest—the sixth—baby.
    She was momentarily breathless with longing. Slammed by thoughts of what could have been. By what she’d dared to hope for. All of which she’d lost much too soon.
    Evie took a steadying breath before she read.
    Her name is Aoife. She is very pretty but has the colic. Timothy is testier than usual. We walk gently around him. All the other children are alive and send their love.
    Dry, brief, affectionate: She heard Cora’s voice plain as day. It was a miracle she wrote at all, with six children.
    And clever Cora had named the newest baby for her! No English employer of opera dancers would allow her to keep a name featuring a lot of unpronounceable vowels all crammed together, so she became Eve instead of Eefa. Cora never asked for money; Evie sent it as a matter of course. She would find a gift for baby Aoife that would be shared among six children and likely destroyed within minutes or at least dismantled by the boys for other uses. Ah, but it taught survival, she supposed, and flexibility. Certainly Evie had grown up strong, but she was the oldest, and she hadn’t a choice in the matter.
    At least Cora’s husband, Timothy, drank less than their own father had, and hadn’t yet run off like their father did though it was possible he was only a baby or two away from doing so. Eve knew how to read between the lines of her sister’s brief letters.
    “Testier”. She suppressed a little clutch of fear and crossed her fingers. A colicky baby could make anyone testier. Hopefully, not testy enough to flee just yet.
    She’d saved the third letter for last because she wasn’t entirely certain she wanted to open it. She’d recognized the arrogant script, the heavily inked pen, waxed close with the vehement press of a signet.
    A seal that might have been her own but for the turn of a card one night.
    Finally, she slid her fingers beneath the wax to break it, and in so doing released a Pandora’s box, the London version: Just the script alone conjured the chink of champagne glasses, chandelier light bouncing off jewels and silk and crystal, clever, brittle conversation, endless laughter. Endless wanting of her.
    She took a bolstering breath.
    My dearest Evie Green-Eyes,
    London is a drear place without you. Even the nectar of gossip fails to sustain me, but this could be because it isn’t nearly as interesting when you aren’t the center of it, if you’ll forgive me, given that the last bit that went round naturally wasn’t much fun for you. I am bored