A Season to Be Sinful by Jo Goodman Read Free Book Online

say it just so: Quels jolis bijoux !
    It required only three days for Sherry to set his other affairs to right. None of them involved a woman, so choosing presents as carefully as he would choose his words did not delay his departure for the country. He canceled all his engagements for the next month, sending his regrets unaccompanied by any explanation. He knew the wags would have it that he was leaving because he had killed that cutpurse. There was never any chance of turning that story, and Sherry did not even try. He returned to the site of the failed robbery for clues about the thief, but no one he suspected of having information would speak to him long.
    The gangs from the meanest streets of Holborn, the ones that roamed Covent and Vauxhall, and the pupils from the schools for thievery that were instituted in St. Giles-in-the-Fields and St. Martins, were a closed bunch. Talking to them was a challenge, for when they did not wish to be understood, they spoke in a cant that was impenetrable to his ear. It was English, to be sure, but the phrasing and meter was more foreign to him than French was to Fanny Hill.
    Inquiries about the thief, even the most inoffensive ones about his health, were met as often by blank stares as they were by suspicious ones. There was no one he could give money to for the mans care. There were plenty who would have taken it; indeed, he had to check his pockets constantly to be certain he still had it, but he had no faith that his sovereigns would ever be used to improve the mans care if he lived or provide a Christian burial if he didnt.
    In the end there was nothing for it but to cut the loose end. Miss Hill was correct in her judgment that he had no use for them. It was just as she had said: he was ruthless in his own fashion.
    It mattered not a whit to Sherry that the ton assumed he was running from something. The truth was that he was running to it, and he had made the decision a full month before the evening at Covent Garden. Arriving at the decision had actually led to that night at the opera, not the reverse.
    London never held the appeal for him that it did for so many others in his set. He liked the card play well enough, the camaraderie of the clubs, the politics in or out of Parliament, the women in or out of bed, the occasional ball, and less occasionally a turn on the floor, but the carousel-like quality of it all bored him near to madness. He kept the house because it belonged in the family, and he could not ignore all the responsibilities of his position in town, but it was only at Granville that he could renew his spirit.
    He needed to breathe unfetid air, paint as the mood seized him, ride hell-bent-for-leather across green fields, bury his hands deep in the fecund soil of the farm, and renew acquaintances at his leisure, not on demand.
    Sherry stood with his back to the library entrance, making a last inspection of the shelves to see if he had missed a volume or two that he would enjoy taking with him. The carriage had been drawn up to the front of the house, and Kearns would arrive soon to inform him that all had been made ready.
    The commotion in the hallway did not make him turn to-ward it. The brief attention he gave it was to suppose his housekeeper would see to it. Mrs. Ponsonby knew her duties and knew what he liked. There had never been anything she couldnt manage.
    The shout, when it came, gave him some concern, but he let it pass. He did not recognize the voice. It had a youthful timbre and all the outrage that only youth can fully express. It actually made him smile. A lad from the kitchen, no doubt, unhappy with some duty he was expected to perform and too foolish to realize Mrs. Ponsonby would never let him out of the kitchen again.
    There was another shout, more of a cry this time. A different voice, though. And then another cry. yes. definitely a cry this time. Mrs. Ponsonby, he decided. A yelp, a squeal, caterwauling, cursing, and still more shouts, some of it