Beauty and the Spy by Julie Anne Long Read Free Book Online

she any other family?"
    "No, sir. Watched her bloke jilt her outright, in fact, sir. Right there in the parlor. He can't marry a penniless girl�he's an heir. She went to live with an aunt."
    "What a shame." Morley did feel an errant stab of sympathy. The horror of losing all he'd acquired woke him less and less often at night as the years went on, but Caroline's letter, and then Makepeace's letter, had introduced sleeplessness again. Blackmail was not a lullaby.
    It was entirely possible James Makepeace had bequeathed the evidence to the girl, if the evidence did indeed exist, and she had managed to keep it about her person, which would explain, perhaps, why they had found nothing in Makepeace's homes. And now that Susannah Makepeace was penniless… perhaps she would resort to her father's means of obtaining an income.
    Or, if she was feeling civic-minded, would somehow get the evidence into the hands of people who would know precisely what to do with it.
    Morley began to concoct still more scenarios in his head, but stopped himself. He could truly make this complicated, if he liked, but he lacked the fervor for complications that characterized his youth. He was tired, and he rather intended to spend his dotage peacefully—in Sussex, gardening—rather than at the end of a rope, swinging. He'd discovered a passion for gardening, in fact, along with large houses and fine furniture. This was odd, since he'd once considered gardening a sort of farming. But wealthy men could afford to tenderly tend frivolous plants; in a way, cultivating roses was the ultimate expression of Morley's rise in the world.
    Sometimes when he was gardening, he'd pull a weed out by its roots, only to watch it sprout again some weeks later, threatening to strangle all he'd carefully tended.
    And he knew, suddenly, that the solution was elegantly simple. Susannah Makepeace was a weed. And if her sisters were to sprout up, too… well, they were also weeds.
    "Mr. Morley? What should I do about Susannah Makepeace, sir?"
    "Why, whatever you do, Bob… you should make it look like an accident."
    And because Bob was a professional, he understood his orders. He puffed out his chest again. He did enjoy a new challenge, and Mr. Morley paid well to keep his own hands free of blood.

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    Chapter Three
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    Two days later, Susannah arrived at the door of Mrs. Frances Perriman's cottage. She would have arrived a good five hours earlier, except that the mail coach in which she had been traveling had tipped over. Keeled over, in fact, like a felled elephant, with a groan and a crash, just as everyone had finally tumbled out of it to go into the inn for a meal.
    All the weary travelers, who by this time heartily loathed the sight and smell and sound of each other, had gazed back at it stupidly, almost unsurprised. Almost perversely pleased that this particular instrument of torture had been felled.
    The horses had been alarmed but unhurt, and it had been determined that the wheel or something or other on the coach had broken. Susannah had heard faint murmurings about it, but she'd been too exhausted to care about the details. And besides, she'd needed all of her resources to locate another conveyance to Barnstable. Someone who would take her there out of sheer kindness, or in exchange for a pair of slippers or gloves. Which was really all she had in the form of currency, anyway.
    As the coach driver refused to hire out his horses as mounts, the passengers descended en masse upon a poor fanner who had innocently arrived to fetch his nephew for a visit. A lot of frantic negotiation ensued among the passengers. Some waved bills, some plied charms, Susannah had nearly sprained her eyelashes in an attempt to beguile and disarm him.
    In the end she'd been triumphant. The farmer agreed to take her a few miles out of his way to deposit her at the door of Mrs. Frances Perriman, and Susannah had needed to remove his nephew's hand from her thigh only once.