Lord Haversham Takes Command by Heidi Ashworth Read Free Book Online

it as she is not present,” Mira said with a toss of her head.
    “Oh, but there you are wrong, my dear. I could hardly speak before you make your bows to the queen, but it is common knowledge that you shall be the next Duchess of Marcross. Certainly your devoted parents have shared with you the news of our impending nuptials. I am persuaded they are as delighted as I am at the prospect. What could be more fortuitous than to have the daughter of my father’s former heir secure the title that should have been her mother’s?”
    Indignant, Mira pulled her hand from his arm in time to prevent it being clamped tightly to his side. “I am persuaded Mother mourned not the loss, George,” she said with a humiliating emphasis on his given name. “As for my father, he would have doubtless carried his title with distinction in spite of never having expected the honor. I have heard it said that the old Duke’s first son, the one who died so long ago, was very much loved by one and all. I am sorry he is not here to enjoy what should have been his.” And with that she pushed past George into The Cygnet and Lute.

Chapter Four
    Harry watched in consternation as the Crenshaw party descended upon the very taproom he had chosen in which to break his journey over a shepherd’s pie and a tankard of ale. For the ale he was most particularly grateful as it was sorely needed to wash down the dinner lodged against the sudden lump that formed in his throat upon the sight of Miss Crenshaw. His anxiety over her welfare, as well as that of her parents, could not be as easily assuaged; there were those who wanted Harry dead for the knowledge he possessed, and he had been shot at only that morning as he had made his way via horseback to meet his secret service contact at the inn. Harry hoped the inn too public a place for a gunman to make another attempt; if not, anyone in Harry’s orbit was in danger of suffering a similar fate. Should his enemies learn of Harry’s attachment to Mira in particular, they would not hesitate to use her any way they chose as a means of coercing Harry to divulge his secrets.
    Fortunately, Higgins, the gentleman seated across from him, seemed not to notice Harry’s sudden discomposure and continued with the low-toned accounting of his orders. Harry learned that when he reached London, he was to take rooms at Claridge’s under a fictitious name. Next, he was to await a specific knock on his door at which time he would depart for the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. Once arrived, he was to make his way to the top of the Great Pagoda and await further instruction.
    Harry wasn’t precisely sure he knew where in the gardens the Great Pagoda stood, but his childhood memory of it assured him that it was stupendously tall and impossible to miss. He suspected his climb to the top of the stairs of the nearly eighty-year-old edifice would prove to be amongst his most dangerous assignments, though not nearly as dangerous as the line Harry just heard George cross during the course of his current conversation with Miss Crenshaw. George was Mira’s cousin and very possibly her intended husband, but Harry would not sit still while George behaved like a lecher set loose in a harem.
    Harry wiped his mouth with his napkin, tossed it to the table, and sauntered across the room to the Crenshaw party, remembering just in time to add the appropriate mince to his step. Though he would much rather have charged ahead to greet the top-lofty Duke with a fist to the chin, he forced himself to go slowly and use the intervening moments to envelope himself in the ‘Bertie’ façade.
    “La, what do we have here?” he asked when he could trust his voice to sound free of fury. “Why, it’s Marcross!” For more than one reason he ignored George’s out-thrust hand and opted to tap the arrogant young nobleman’s shoulder instead. “I do believe, yes I
do
believe it has been since Eton that we have met!”
    George was stunned into silence