Amelia Grey - [Rogues' Dynasty 06] by The Rogue Steals a Bride Read Free Book Online Page B

have just been nice and batted her eyelashes at Mr. Brentwood the way Miss Craftsman and Miss Slant had?
    But she knew the answer to that.

Four
    Man is only miserable so far as he thinks himself so.
    —Jacopo Sannazaro
    “Damnation,” Matson murmured under his breath after nicking his chin with his razor.
    He leaned in closer to the mirror and splashed water on the cut. It was hell shaving every morning now that he’d grown the fine, half-inch line of beard along the edges of his chin and jaw, but he just couldn’t abide the thought of letting his valet shave him. Now that he was back in England, it was the gentlemanly thing to do, but Matson had lived in America too long to return to all of the rules and traditions of his birth land.
    It took a steady hand, but with concentration he closely trimmed the blasted beard. He would keep the offending facial hair because it pleased him that he no longer looked exactly like his twin brother, and he was damned pleased he no longer resembled a much younger Sir Randolph Gibson.
    Matson shook his head and sighed as he stared at himself in the mirror and asked, “Did you really kiss that man’s ward last night?”
    He nodded to his reflection and added more soapy lather to his neck. That wasn’t his smartest move, but how was he to know who she was?
    It irritated the devil out of him that Miss Sophia Hart knew there had been an affair between his mother and Sir Randolph. Most Londoners suspected it but had no way of knowing for sure. Sophia had heard the story from the man himself.
    And by eavesdropping.
    He couldn’t hold that against her, though he would like to. It was human nature to be curious, and most children deliberately listened to their parents’ conversations at some point during their childhood. If fate had been only a little kinder to him and allowed him to be the one who had overheard his parents discuss that bit of useful news, he’d be a much happier man today. He needed to see Sophia and find out what else she knew about his life that he didn’t know.
    His stomach convulsed every time he thought about the lovely and intriguing Miss Hart being connected to Sir Randolph in any way. At the time, he thought a taste of her sweet lips on his would be worth the risk of getting caught, but not anymore. So why was he letting her get under his skin like a burr under a saddle blanket?
    Because something about her appealed to him.
    “Something?” he looked in the mirror and asked himself. “Everything,” he answered.
    From the moment he saw her walking toward him, she radiated confidence, and he found that extremely attractive.
    “Damn fate,” he whispered and dipped his blade into the bowl of foamy water.
    Years ago his father had sent him and his brother to America, expecting them to make their home there and never return to claim the heritage they’d been born to. He and Iverson didn’t know why their father had insisted they start Brentwood’s Sea Coast Ship Building Company. In England it was unheard of for sons of a titled man to manage a business, but no one gave such a task a second thought in Baltimore. For most men in America, it was the way things were done. You made your own way in life, and you didn’t live a life of leisure because you had a generous allowance from your father’s entailed estates.
    At first, he and Iverson had felt as if their father had placed them in exile. Even though they had been given the money to start the company, it hadn’t been easy to accomplish anything in the new country. Because of continued tensions between the Americans and the British Crown, Iverson and Matson did their best to hide their aristocratic British roots. But they were Englishmen through and through, and over time, the new country couldn’t compete with their homeland. Their parents had died, and the twins had gotten older. Moving their business to London seemed to be the right thing to do, since it was past time they settled down and started