Alyssa Everett

Alyssa Everett by A TrystWith Trouble Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: Alyssa Everett by A TrystWith Trouble Read Free Book Online
Authors: A TrystWith Trouble
eyes. “I’ll drop by tomorrow too, Teddy.”
    He gave me a grateful look. “Thanks awfully for everything, Ben.”
    I thought Teddy had acquitted himself rather well, aside from his insistence on putting his head on the chopping block for that die-away Lady Helen’s sake. He had to know he faced possible arrest as soon as the coroner’s jury rendered its verdict, yet he’d stuck fast to his story, and he seemed tolerably composed.
    “I haven’t done anything of help yet,” I reminded him. “But don’t worry. You’ll come through this all right and tight.”
    We parted to go our separate ways. John and the carriage set off north toward Upper Brook Street while I started south toward Piccadilly. As soon as I reached the end of the square, however, I doubled back to Leonard House.
    Once there, I kept clear of the lamplight, waiting in the darkness beneath the front windows. I wondered how Barbara was faring inside. I rather admired the way she’d volunteered to get her hands on John’s note. Whatever her faults—and, good Lord, she had an abundance of them—she was no shrinking violet.
    Her looks were certainly out of the common too. She had a figure more suited to a bird of paradise than to a sheltered society miss, and one didn’t often see hair that rich, deep red. Throw in her statuesque height, that alabaster face and her regal bearing, and it was a wonder she didn’t intimidate every male she met. Then there was that bedroom voice of hers, and that habit she had of looking sidelong at a man, her green eyes simultaneously sultry and challenging...
    God, the wait was getting to me. I shook my head to clear it and checked my watch. However agreeable Barbara might be to look at, she was a haughty, bad-tempered shrew. I was only tolerating her assistance for Teddy’s sake, and there was an end on it.
    Barbara
    Shortly after the coroner ordered Sam Garvey’s body carried away, Mr. Dawson and the magistrate’s man took their leave. With Cliburne and the other gentlemen already gone, Helen gave a conspicuous yawn and announced her intention to retire.
    “I think I’ll go up too,” I said, grateful I had an assignment to carry out before bed. There was no way I could sleep yet. A murderer remained loose somewhere nearby, possibly still in the house. Before long, the coroner’s inquest would render its verdict, whereupon poor Cliburne might well be clapped in jail. And Helen obviously knew more than she was saying. It was all rather exciting, though of course I couldn’t forget a man was dead.
    I waited just long enough to give my visit an impromptu appearance, and then I knocked on the door to Helen’s bedroom. “May I come in?” I asked, poking my head inside. “After such a dreadful evening, I don’t quite know what to do with myself.”
    She regarded me in evident surprise. “If you like.”
    I couldn’t really blame her for the surprise, since Helen and I had never enjoyed the kind of close relationship typical of sisters. My old schoolmates had looked on their sisters as confidantes, the guardians of their deepest secrets. If I’d ever shared a secret with Helen, anything from how much I’d frittered away on a bonnet to when and where I’d received my first kiss, she would have run right to Papa or Mama and tattled. We lived more like acquaintances than sisters.
    But now I rather regretted it, for I realized Helen’s life must be as gripping as any gothic novel. She had men falling at her feet wherever she went, a footman embracing her in a public library, her betrothed nobly overlooking her slip, the rumored lover murdered under our very roof, her betrothed taking responsibility for the crime...and now she was involved in clandestine communication with his illegitimate half-brother.
    Helen’s room was furnished in an abundance of pink chintz and lace, as dainty and feminine as she was. Just entering it made me feel clumsy and out of place. She was sitting at her dressing table, still

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