Lady Beware by Jo Beverley Read Free Book Online Page B

it.”
    Lead-footed Ellie grasped the handle of the wooden bucket of water and stumped off with a rag.
    â€œNo one’s been to the front door yet this morning?” Darien said.
    â€œNo, milord. We’re just breakfasting. Do you want your breakfast now?”
    He ignored that. “Has this happened before?”
    More shifty looks. He simply waited. He’d dealt with far worse rascals than these in the army.
    â€œAt first,” Mrs. Prussock said. “In the days after Mr. Marcus did what he did. Or so I’ve heard.”
    He frowned. “You weren’t here then?”
    â€œNo, milord. We was hired as caretakers when your father died, milord.”
    He’d assumed they’d been here longer, but of course not. His father, loose screw though he’d been, would have needed better service than this.
    â€œLet me know if anything like this happens again,” he commanded. “And yes, breakfast now, please.”
    He left wondering what it would be like to have a normal household. As pleasant as having a normal family and a normal life, he assumed. And as likely.
    The Prussocks had taken on the roles of butler, cook/housekeeper, and maid, but none were trained for their part. Finding better servants to work for a Cave would be difficult, however, so he was thankful for inadequate mercies. They kept the house reasonably clean and tidy and provided plain but edible food, which was all he needed.
    He’d made one addition—a valet, necessary to take care of his new wardrobe, which he considered his armor in this battle. Lovegrove was slender, finicky, and skilled. He was also drunk most of the time, but beggars can’t be choosers.
    As he waited for his breakfast, Darien paced, considering the blood. It had to be a response to his invasion of the inner circles of society, but who would do such a thing or order it done? The Wilmott family, who still had their town house on the opposite side of Hanover Square?
    He hadn’t known they still spent the season there. He’d assumed they’d shun the place where their daughter came to a violent end in the green and pleasant central gardens. His presence here could be painful, but the empty house was no easier to bear, surely.
    Mrs. Prussock bustled in and laid out fried eggs, ham, bread, and coffee. As he ate, Darien couldn’t escape thoughts of that crime. He’d been in Spain when Marcus had murdered sixteen-year-old Mary Wilmott, but the news had traveled fast. Darien had been shocked, but not surprised. Marcus had been strange all his life, but untrammeled debauchery had given him the pox at a young age, and it had gone to his brain.
    He probably should have been locked up years before the crime, but their father had had the sort of aristocratic arrogance that would admit no fault. No one even knew why Marcus had seized Mary Wilmott, cut her throat and mutilated her, and left her corpse in open view.
    No one knew what the young lady had been up to in the gardens at dusk, but that was a question no one asked about the girl who’d come to be known as “Sweet Mary Wilmott,” subject of poem and ballad.
    Marcus had been easy enough to arrest. He’d left bloody footsteps all the way back to Cave House and been found there, gnawing on one of his bedposts.
    It certainly wasn’t an event easily forgotten, but Darien hadn’t expected this strong a reaction six years after the crime, five years since Marcus’s death.
    But Mary Wilmott had been one of the ton’s own. They did not easily forget or forgive.
    But nor did he.
    He’d rise even earlier in the future and make sure any further mischief was cleaned away before people were up to see it.

Chapter 8
    E xhaustion meant Thea didn’t lie awake fretting, but when she woke, all her problems rushed back. Her mother, the Cave, the kiss, her promise. Twist her conscience as she might, she couldn’t deny that she had made a