More Than a Mistress by Ann Lethbridge Read Free Book Online Page A

tapestry-hung nightmare of a room in every shade of green. It looked worse than it had the previous evening.
    He threw back the covers and slipped from the bed. He strode to the window. He’d left the curtains open, too, as well as the bed curtains. Unending white accounted for the unnatural light. He frowned at the sky. While the clouds seemed less lowering, he doubted the roads would be passable.
    And he was stuck in a house of ill repute. A joke Robert would have loved. Charlie didn’t find it in the least bit humorous. She should have told him last night instead of her pretending to be respectable—well, almost respectable.
    A vision of Merry’s lovely slender leg in his hand popped into his brain. The arousal that had tormented him the previous evening, and upon awakening, started anew. He cursed. He’d behaved like a perfect gentleman with a woman who kept a bawdy house. What a quixotic fool she must have thought him.
    He turned away from the window at the sound of the chamber door opening. Brian with boots in hand. The lad bowed deeply. ‘Good morning, my lord. Mr Gribble said to tell you the snow on the moors is really deep.’
    ‘I guessed as much. You don’t need to stay. I can manage.’
    The lad looked so crestfallen at the dismissal, Charlie relented. ‘Brush my claret-coloured coat and then iron my cravat, if you wouldn’t mind.’
    The lad touched his forelock. ‘Reet gladly, my lord.’

    In less than an hour, Charlie was hunching his shoulders against a wind stronger than the previous evening and holding fast to his hat brim. The drifting snow came close to the top of his boots as he slogged down a hill to the stables. Set around three sides of a square courtyard, the building offered welcome shelter from the gale. He entered through the first door he came to and almost bumped into a fellow coming out. Not a groom. Of course not. It was Miss Draycott in a man’s low-crowned hat and her mannish driving coat.
    Charlie raised his hat and smiled. ‘Good morning. I didn’t expect to see you up and about at this early hour.’
    After the startled look faded from her expression, she frowned. Not pleased to see him. ‘I didn’t think London dandies rose from their bed before noon.’
    ‘Mr Brummell has given us all a very bad reputation,’ Charlie said mournfully. He knocked the snow off his boots against the door frame. ‘I came to see how the horses were doing.’ No sense in alarming her, when he had nothing but vague suspicions.
    ‘Don’t you trust my servants to take proper care of your animals, my lord?’
    My, her temper was ill today. ‘If I didn’t trust your servants, Miss Draycott, I would have come out here last night.’
    She acknowledged the hit with a slight nod.
    ‘I also wondered about your team. How is that foreleg?’
    Her shoulders slumped. ‘Not good. Jed poulticed it, but it is badly swollen.’
    ‘Do you mind if I look?’
    ‘Not at all.’ She sounded quite doubtful. Probably thought he wouldn’t know one end of the beast from the other. Nor would he indicate otherwise. The fact that he liked working with horses was no one’s business but his own.
    They walked along the stable block. A single row of stalls built along each back wall, nice drainage, fresh straw and a surprising number of mounts, both riding and draught. He nodded his approval.
    The carriage horses were in the middle block. The wrinkled wizened man who’d met them with the lantern the previous evening stood leaning on a broom, watching the injured horse eat.
    ‘Jed, this is Lord Tonbridge,’ Merry said.
    He knuckled his forehead. ‘Aah. Yours are reet fine animals, yer lordship. Two stalls down they are.’
    ‘Thank you. Miss Draycott is concerned about this one. May I see?’
    The old fellow ran a knowing eye down his person. ‘Well, if you don’t mind mucking in the midden, you’re reet welcome.’
    Charlie inched in beside the horse and sank down on his haunches. The groom had packed a