Jane Feather - [V Series] by Virtue Read Free Book Online Page A

prepared to forgo the wager.”
    “I always pay my debts of honor,” she said. “Or did you think that I was without honor in that respect also?”
    He waved his hands in hasty retraction. “It was only a suggestion. One quite without merit, I realize.”
    Judith glared at him for a minute, then she turned and marched away through the trees.
    Marcus let out his breath on a slow exhalation, runninghis hands through his hair. He had assumed she received such proposals often enough. She lived by her wits, it was only to be expected that she might use her body, too. But what had her brother said? Something about his sister’s eccentric principles. Presumably, he’d just been given a lesson in them.
    Sweet heaven, what an exciting partner in passion such a woman would make. Perversely, he found he had not the slightest intention of giving up his pursuit.
    “Good God, what’s happened to send you into such a temper, Ju?” Sebastian looked up from the chess board as his sister banged fuming through the door of their living room.
    “I don’t think I have ever been angrier,” she said, drawing her gloves off her trembling hands. “Lord Carrington has just had the … the unmitigated gall to offer me a carte blanche.” She tossed her gloves onto the sofa and pulled the pins loose from her hat.
    Sebastian whistled. “What did you say?”
    “I shot him.” She pulled the pistol from her reticule and hurled it onto the sofa.
    Her brother reached over and picked up the weapon. The smell of cordite was acrid on the muzzle. He spun the chamber. It was empty. “Well, you certainly shot something,” he observed. “But somehow I doubt it was the marquis. You’ve the devil of a temper, but I don’t see you as a murderess.”
    Judith bit her lip. Sebastian could always bring her down to earth. “I shot between his feet,” she said. “But I frightened him, Sebastian. He really thought for a minute he was about to meet his maker.” She chuckled suddenly, relishing the memory. “Pour me a glass of sherry,love. It’s been a most trying morning, one way or another.”
    Sebastian filled two sherry glasses from the decanter on the sideboard. “What were the terms of the carte blanche?” he asked with a bland look. “Just as a matter of interest, of course.”
    When she told him, he whisded once more. “If it weren’t for Gracemere, it might have done very well for both of us.”
    “You would sell your own sister?” she exclaimed.
    “Oh, only to the highest bidder,” he assured her solemnly.
    Judith threw a cushion at him, then bent to examine the chess problem positioned on the board. Chess was a way of sharpening their wits, particularly before an evening’s gaming.
    “Of course, if anyone suspects for one second that we’re not what we seem when we get to London, we’ll never be able to move in Gracemere’s circles,” Sebastian said, serious now. He sipped his sherry. “You’ve inadvertently given Carrington the wrong impression. I think, m’dear, that it may be time to cultivate higher necklines and a pious air.”
    “And what will you cultivate, brother?” She regarded him over the lip of her glass.
    “Oh, I shall be a most serious student of foreign parts,” he declared. “I shall have traveled extensively and be most amazingly knowledgeable, and most amazingly boring, as I prose on and on about the flora and fauna of exotic places.”
    Judith chuckled, imagining her good-humored, insouciant sibling in such a guise. “You’d have to forsake striped waistcoats and starched cravats, and play whist for penny points.”
    “Well, that I don’t think I could manage,” he said.“Not if we’re to have enough to pay our expenses.” He came to look at the chess board with her. “Can you see it? White to move and mate in three. I’ve been looking at it for half an hour and can’t get beyond queening the pawn. But then it’s stalemate.”
    Judith frowned, considering. What if the pawn knighted,