Lady Wild by Máire Claremont Read Free Book Online Page B

the house, pressing on his mood. It wasn’t right, because Ophelia wasn’t some bloody cloud ready to turn the world inky with its deluge. She was the fiery sun, and to his consternation, he longed for her warmth.
    He shook his head, ready to turn away, ready to find some vice that would turn his thoughts from the whole thing. But then, somewhere in the distance, in the din of the London rabble, he heard it. The clatter of first-grade, steel-plated, lacquered wheels making their way over slick cobbles.
    To his horror, he found himself holding his breath. His fingers clenched into fists, and he stood stock still, as still as a man blindfolded, waiting for the firing squad.
    The green coach with its gold coat of arms dashed around the corner of Latimer Street into the main square. The rampant bear of his crest flashed gold, even in the grim light. He stood his post, finally breathing shallow breaths until the murmurs of his staff drifted up from the foyer.
    The soft glow of a female voice drifted toward him. Not hers, but that of her mother’s. He waited and waited for her to speak, half-afraid she wasn’t there. Then—
    “This house would do for the entirety of Sussex. Should we invite them?”
    The droll, gun-metal chill of those words sent his lips to curl into a delighted grin. She’d come. She’d taken his insane, outlandish offer. To his absolute chagrin, to his utter perversity, he was overwhelmed with a dancing, boyish glee.
    She’d come.
    He whipped around and strode down the stair but stopped on the landing.
    Ophelia stood, her fingertips on the worn velvet ribbon at her chin. Her gaze peered around her with a sort of disapproving skepticism, not the awe so many displayed when visiting the massive home his grandfather had built in London during the reign of Charles the Second.
    It would seem the soaring ceiling and painted frescoes didn’t impress her. That porcelain visage of hers didn’t alter as she turned about. Her mother was sitting in a padded chair before the landing, her small body already as fine as a bird’s that had seen too harsh a winter.
    Lady Darlington needed a bed, a fire, and hot brandy. Was he truly up to the task of helping her? Doubt and a sharp pang of an unwelcome emotion—fear—caught him off guard. Perhaps he should leave them be. Allow them to take refuge in his home, but stay far, far away. He didn’t know how to behave with such ladies as the Darlingtons.
    And just as he was about to turn on his booted heel, disappear up the wide stair, stride down to the back entrance and make his escape to the gambling hells of London, where he could lose the impending painful memories that were threatening to crash to the surface, Lady Ophelia lifted her cool, still countenance and pinned her piercing eyes to his.
     

     
    Dear lord, had she truly agreed to this madness? Ophelia couldn’t make sense of her surroundings. She hadn’t been in such a grand place in half a decade, and her heart had leaped into her throat, beating in such a way that she could only manage the barest murmurs of thanks to the footmen and butler.
    She even managed to ignore the disdain drifting off the butler toward her and her mother and their small chests of things. The man would be even more horrified to learn that one box was almost entirely full of books.
    She couldn’t part with her books, no more than her mother could. They’d married literature in a way one couldn’t marry a man. For literature. . .books. . .never abandoned one in a sea of troubles, but rather kept the nearly drowned buoyed by hope and worlds in which to disappear.
    But the moment the maids unpacked, the entire household would know their reduced circumstances. Her ratty underthings, mended again and again, and her two frocks made with a shoddy thread, would be the talk of the servants’ hall.
    Still. They were here. In London. In one of the grandest town homes she could recall in all her existence. Oh, she’d been to London before.