Forever Your Earl by Eva Leigh Read Free Book Online

at herself.
    Who was she? She felt oddly lost within this masculine persona, as if Eleanor had disappeared and a strange man had taken her place. Except the strange man was her.
    â€œOh, Eleanor,” Maggie said on an exhale, her face aglow, “just think of the trouble you could get into.”
    â€œThat’s right,” Eleanor said after a moment. “I’m a man now. I can do . . . anything.”
    The power was intoxicating. No wonder men walked around looking so smug. The world belonged to them.
    And now she was about to enter that world. With Lord Ashford beside her. Eleanor smiled. Oh, it was going to be quite a night.
    B are-­chested, Daniel stood before his mirror and dabbed shaving lather onto his face with a boar bristle brush. Once he’d sufficiently covered his cheeks and jaw, he ran his straight razor along the planes of his face, scraping off any whiskers that had emerged since this morning. Each stroke of the blade made a soft, rasping sound, and the aroma of sandalwood wafted up from the lather. He wiped the razor on a towel and continued the process, revealing more and more of his skin. A familiar, comforting routine.
    He ignored Strathmore’s sigh. His valet never approved of the fact that Daniel insisted on shaving himself—­even though Strathmore had been in his ser­vice for over ten years and not once had Daniel permitted the valet to attend to his shave. Daniel’s father, the old earl, hadn’t approved of Daniel’s practice, either. But, for God’s sake, Daniel was a functioning adult, capable of looking after the state of his own facial hair. At least he relented and permitted Strathmore to pick out his clothes. But he put the clothes on himself. None of this being buttoned into his breeches nonsense.
    As achievements went, it was ridiculously minor, but that was the odd hallmark of a title and wealth. Theoretically, he was one of the more powerful men in the country, yet when it came to matters such as one’s toilette, a nobleman reverted to infancy. As if the responsibilities of his rank were too onerous to bear up under the weight of tying his own cravat.
    Behind him, Strathmore laid out his ensemble for the evening, selecting everything with the care the valet always displayed. It was almost a shame for Daniel to take credit for wearing his clothing, when it was all Strathmore’s expert eye.
    In keeping with the valet’s understanding of occasion and fashion, Strathmore had selected a burnished-­bronze silk waistcoat and a deep-­forest-­green coat. Elegant, but not overly so, since Daniel wasn’t attending any sanctioned Season event tonight. Just the right amount of restraint and flash for a gaming hell.
    Finished with his shave, Daniel rinsed his face, patted on some tonic, and slipped on a fine white shirt, tucking the tails into his knee breeches.
    Miss Hawke would likely be doing the exact same thing right about now. Dressing herself in men’s clothing in readiness for the evening. Was she afraid of entering an exclusively male realm? Excited?
    The latter, most likely. Miss Hawke didn’t seem the type of woman who feared much. She’d seemed out-­and-­out thrilled by the idea of posing as a man and visiting a gaming hell. Bizarre woman. Yet he couldn’t remember any of the ladies at any of the assemblies or picnics or other gatherings displaying half her enthusiasm. Either the young, husband-­hunting girls had an air of frantic, desperate merriment, or the older women could barely contain their ennui at yet another Season.
    It felt strange—­unreal—­to dress as he did every night, knowing that Jonathan was somewhere out in London, likely not dressing for an evening of elegant, yet wild, entertainment. But Daniel suppressed his guilt, the way he had to before each night’s revelry. He needed to keep up the pretense while looking for Jonathan.
    When Daniel had been out