Lady in Green by Bárbara Metzger Read Free Book Online Page B

who’d have me? I’m just a second son with a houseful of sisters, and m’brother’s already filling his nursery with heirs. Ain’t got a fortune, no title to trade for one, so no nabob’s going to hand me his daughter. Wouldn’t want an heiress anyway; don’t fancy living under the cat’s paw.” He considered his friend’s tall, athletic form and chiseled features that were only made more interesting by the purplish bruises. Then he contemplated his own short, stocky body and carroty hair. “Ain’t got your looks, and never did have your way with the ladies. Still, we’re not getting any younger. All I’ve got to offer is a comfortable income. If I found a comfortable female, I just might take the plunge.”
    “Dash it, marriage isn’t a bath you can jump out of if the water’s too cold! It’s for deuced eternity!”
    Cholly nodded sagely. No argument there. “If you won’t take a wife, then how about a mistress?”
    “What, a fixed arrangement? Hell, if I wanted to be faithful to the same woman day after day, I’d get married.”
    Cholly choked. “You mean you intend to be constant when you’re hitched? You?”
    “Why not? I’d expect my wife to be.” Gard ignored his friend’s sputtering. “No, mistresses are more trouble than wives, greedier and harder to please. They’re always throwing jealous tantrums and they’re impossible to get rid of. No wife of mine would expect me to live in her pocket, and she’d dashed better be too well-bred to get into distempered freaks. No, thank you, the carefree bachelor life suits me fine.”
    Cholly raised his quizzing glass again. “Looks to me instead like the tomcatting is killing you, creeping down alleys and over windowsills. What you need is an establishment of your own.”
    The earl resented his friend’s inference that he needed taking care of. “Have you forgotten Gardiner House? It’s a little hard to miss if you happen to be near Grosvenor Square.”
    “No, I mean a pied-à-terre, a little place you can come and go, private like. Discreet.”
    The earl called for another bottle. “A bijou. Interesting. I could fix the place up the way I like, even set up a little drawing studio. I could hire a whole new staff of servants who wouldn’t carry tales.”
    Cholly smiled. “And who’d make sure the sheets are clean.”
    Gard laughed, too. “Can you imagine me asking poor old Ingraham to carry fresh linens to a house of convenience? He’d have a spasm.”
    “Should have pensioned off the chap years ago if he disapproves of you.”
    “I can’t. The man valeted my own father. Frankly, it would be a relief not to see his disappointment every day. I’m getting to like your idea more and more. Still, I could make the love nest so cozy, the birds of paradise might want to take up permanent residence. They’re deuced difficult to dislodge, you know.”
    “Blister it, you have the butler send ’em to the rightabout if you’re too tender-hearted.”
    They both laughed at the picture of the elderly Gardiner butler giving some courtesan her congé. Old Foggarty was another long-time employee who refused to leave the earl’s service, he and Ingraham having nowhere else to go. “Lord save me from loyal old family retainers.”
    Cholly stared at the tassels on his Hessians. “Seems to me you could keep any of the ladybirds from settling in if you told them right out the arrangement was only temporary, that you were just renting the place. I recall hearing that Elphinstone’s digs out in Bloomsbury are for let.”
    “Someone mentioned that he went with the delegation to Vienna. I didn’t realize Lady Rosalind went with him.”
    “Should have. Inseparable, don’t you know.”
    “And you say their house is out in Bloomsbury…?”
    *
    The town house could have fit into the entry hall of the earl’s principal seat in Suffolk, but it was well maintained and respectable-looking. The street was quiet, with trees and flowers, and mothers