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

fully dressed right down to her gloves.
    “Aren’t you going to ring for your maid?” I asked, setting my candle atop the mantelpiece and perching gingerly on the foot of her bed.
    She shook her head. “I don’t think I could sleep yet myself. I only came up because I couldn’t take another second of being in the same room where Sam was k—where he died.” She rose restlessly, stripped off her gloves and tossed them on the bed.
    I’d hoped the note from John Mainsforth might flutter to the floor, unnoticed by Helen, but alas, it remained tucked inside the glove. I’d have to find some opportunity to retrieve it when she wasn’t looking.
    “I can hardly believe something so ghastly could happen here,” I said. “And then all those strangers milling about—that Bow Street Runner and the coroner, to say nothing of that detestable cousin of Cliburne’s. I have no idea what he was doing here.”
    Helen sat down on the bed beside me. “Beningbrough? Oh, Teddy sent for him, I’m sure. Teddy idolizes Beningbrough.”
    Even the mere mention of the man seemed to bring out the worst in me. “Idolizes that overbearing ass? Why?”
    “Teddy says Beningbrough is the most loyal fellow he knows, and pluck to the backbone. It’s a point of pride with Lord Beningbrough that he’s never backed down from a fight.”
    “What an idiotic thing to pride oneself on. What if his adversary should be bigger, or a better fighter?”
    “I don’t think that’s likely. According to Teddy, Beningbrough is so handy with his fives, no one at Gentleman Jackson’s will even spar with him anymore.”
    A vision of the tall, muscular marquess stripped to his shirtsleeves in the boxing ring popped into my head, making my pulse skip. “Is that so?” I scoffed, irritated with myself. “He may have been lucky so far, but someday he’s liable to wind up with that fine face of his permanently rearranged.”
    “But that’s another reason Teddy idolizes him. I don’t believe Beningbrough would care.”
    I rolled my eyes. “How typical. He’d sooner suffer than show a little humility. If that’s not the height of foolish masculine pride!”
    “Oh, Barbara. As if you haven’t gone without supper for three days running, or chosen to stay confined to your room when the rest of the family went to the theater, merely because you refused to apologize to Papa when he gave you the chance.”
    I straightened indignantly. “That’s different. Those were matters of principle. That time I went without supper, for instance...that wasn’t pride, it was because Papa said I’d taken the tea cake Mama had set aside for him, and I hadn’t. Edmund had. I still had mine from when the tray first went ’round.”
    “What difference does it make in the end whether you took the cake or Edmund took it? Papa gave you the chance to apologize for talking back to him, and you wouldn’t. You’d rather suffer than humble yourself the tiniest bit.” With a frown, Helen returned to her dressing table.
    “It was a matter of principle,” I repeated, wondering why my ethics sounded like little more than stubbornness in Helen’s version of the events. Just because she was pretty and could charm her way out of any difficulty didn’t mean everyone could sail through life as easily. Some of us had little more than our dignity to cling to.
    Recalling my mission, I made a grab for her evening gloves, and in the brief instant she had her back turned I pulled out the note and thrust it under me, sitting on it like a brood hen on a clutch of eggs. “Whether he’s Cliburne’s idol or no,” I said to cover up the faint creak of the bedstead, “Beningbrough is far too high in the instep. Did you know he thinks himself too good to marry?”
    “He is awfully handsome, though, isn’t he?” Sighing, Helen picked up her ivory-backed hairbrush and drew it pensively through her curls. “ All the men in Teddy’s family are handsome.”
    “It’s obvious Beningbrough