Miss Lindel's Love by Cynthia Bailey Pratt Read Free Book Online Page A

his entrance.
    “Just a moment,” Dominic said, turning the page.
    Kenton occupied himself by opening the envelopes that waited for him. Two were from friends of Flora; they went in the fire. Two more were from tailors, inveigling him to change from Weston to themselves. One was a charmingly scented note from a not-so-youthful, but surpassingly fair incognita, welcoming him to town and inviting him to a card party. Kenton knew if he sent an acceptance, he’d find no other guests. He weighed this one against the other note welcoming him to town, a polite note from Greeves, his man of affairs, reminding him that he’d promised to go over all the pending business. All the notes but this followed the first two into the fireplace. He had no wish to tumble headlong into another soulless liaison so soon after escaping one.
    Dominic placed one long finger between the pages of the book and looked up, seemingly surprised to find Kenton in his own apartment. “Oh, hullo.”
    “Good book?”
    “Hmmm. It’s one of yours.”
    “I know.”
    Dominic stood up, all in sections like a hinged easel. He shook hands with Kenton and the two men grinned at each other. “You’ve grown thinner,” Kenton said, waving Dom back into his chair.
    “Fewer good dinners in town when the ton’s away.”
    “Why didn’t you accept my invitation to Finchley, you stupid fellow? Mrs. Worthing would have fed you until you had a bailiff’s belly.”
    “No one knows when the case will be called, Ken-ton. I didn’t dare leave London for fear I might not return in time.”
    “You believe it will be soon, then?”
    “I live in hope.”
    Kenton poured out a glass of claret and clinked it against the side of Dom’s pint. “Here’s to the future Duke of Saltaire.”
    Dom’s mobile face twisted into a wry grimace. “Whoever he may prove to be.”
    “Come, now. You have the stronger case; Greeves says so and he should know if anyone does.”
    “There’s nothing to be done about it now, anyway,” Dom said with a fatalistic shrug. “The evidence is all in. It’s waiting for the decision that takes all the stuffing out of one.”
    “Well, come to dinner with me and we’ll undertake to put the stuffing back in. What say you to Boodle’s?”
    “You won’t find me turning my nose up at a sausage from a farthing ‘fry,’ let alone dinner at the best club in town. But what’s set you to grinning like a winning tout?”
    “Does it show?”
    “To one who knows you as well as I, yes.”
    Kenton refilled his glass. “If you must know, you gossipmonger, I’ve just broken with Flora Armitage.”
    “What? Your full-blown charmer? How did this come about?”
    “I’d had enough,” Kenton said, wondering if even Dom would understand his sudden revulsion of feeling. “I suddenly realized that she’d be as fond of a monkey as myself should it have the same title and fortune.”
    Dom leaned back and once more kicked his feet onto the tabletop. “I could have told you that, as could half a dozen before you.”
    “You don’t mean that you ever ...”
    “Heaven forfend,” Dom said, giving his rich chuckle. “Besides, Dominic Swift isn’t rich enough to tempt her, whatever she might say to the Duke of Saltaire. But it’s not difficult to recognize that avaricious glint once you’ve seen it in other eyes.”
    Kenton recalled that one of the reasons for his friend’s present financial low water was the demands of his own former mistress. Dom’s case was different from his own in that he’d been in love past praying for. “I suppose I was a fool.”
    “Not if you received good value for your trinkets,” Dom said.
    Kenton found himself telling his friend about his adventures in the cathedral, even about meeting the country tenant. “Though she knew who I was, she treated me without any particular marks of attention.”
    “You mean she didn’t toadeat you?”
    “No. Neither did she assume a familiarity which so many fools substitute for