Innocent Courtesan to Adventurer's Bride by Louise Allen Read Free Book Online Page B

have found some way out of the trap without abandoning her so brutally? Doubt began to gnaw at her strangely instinctive support for him. No, she decided after a moment’s thought, against a powerful earl Ashley would have had no leverage at all unless he had been prepared to tell the truth about his fiancée.
    â€˜It might have been forgotten, if it were not for the fact that, once abroad, Mr Ashley rapidly set about losing what innocence was left to him, along with any shreds of his reputation,’ Trimble said in a voice scrupulously free from any expression. ‘The learned journals were only too happy to publish his writings from exotic parts of the world—but his late lordship used to read me stories from the scandal sheets with great glee. Not all Mr Ashley’s explorations were of a scholarly nature.’
    â€˜What sort of stories?’ Lina asked, not wanting to know and yet drawn with the same terrible curiosity that made a carriage crash impossible to ignore. Harems again?
    â€˜I could not possibly recount them to an unmarried lady,’ the butler said. ‘Suffice it to say that they make Lord Byron’s exploits seem tame.’
    â€˜So he is not so safe, after all?’ She was fearful, and she knew that she should be, but a shameful inner excitement was fluttering inside her, too. Fool , she admonished herself. Just because he is not a fat lecher with bulging eyes it does not mean that he could not accomplish your ruin just as effectively and twice as ruthlessly.
    â€˜I have every confidence that, in his own home and where an unmarried lady under his protection is concerned, we need have no fears about his lordship’s honourable behaviour,’ Trimble pronounced. Was he certain, or was he, a loyal family servant, unable to believe the worst of his new master?
    At least I need have no fear for my reputation, being under his protection, for the world already believes me to be a whore and a jewel thief , Lina thought bitterly. It had taken a while, in the friendly comfort of The Blue Door, for the truth to dawn on her, but by taking refuge in a brothel, she had as comprehensively ruined herself as her mother had—and without having committed any indiscretion in the first place. But what of my virtue? Should she lock her door at night?
    â€˜Thank you for confiding in me, Trimble,’ she said with what she thought was passable composure. The doorbell rang. ‘That will be Mr Havers, I have no doubt.’ She had no intention of being seen by the lawyer, a man who might be expected to receive the London newspapers daily and who doubtless studied the reports of crimes with professional interest. A description of the fugitive Celina Shelley would have been in all of them, she was sure.
    The butler went out, leaving her shaken and prey to some disturbing imaginings. It was one thing to find herself in a house with a man who looked like the hero of a lurid novel, quite another to discover that he had the reputation to match and was probably as much villain as hero. Last night she must have been mad to exchange banter with him, to try out her inexpert flirtation technique. It was like a mouse laying a crumb of cheese between the cat’s paws and expecting it not to take mouse and cheese both in one mouthful. How he must have laughed at her behind that polite mask.
    Trimble appeared in the doorway. ‘His lordship hasrequested that the household assemble immediately in the dining room to hear the will read, Miss Haddon.’
    â€˜He cannot mean me.’ Lina stayed where she was. ‘I have no possible interest in the document. It is none of my business.’
    â€˜He said everyone, Miss Haddon.’
    â€˜Very well.’ Perhaps she could slip in at the back and sit behind Peter, the largest of the footmen. Provided she could feel safe and unseen, then it would be interesting to hear Lord Dreycott’s no doubt eccentric dispositions, she reflected,