Notorious by Nicola Cornick Read Free Book Online Page A

heat, Lady Carew?”
    “Suffering as a result of your discourtesy,” Susanna snapped.
    He raised a brow. “There was a time when you did not object to being held in my arms.” He straightened, driving his hands into the pockets of his coat. “But of course, I forgot—that was for educational purposes only, was it not?” His voice was heavily laced with irony. “That horse has a chest that’s toonarrow and legs that are too short,” he added, running an eye over the bay in the box.
    “I know,” Susanna said crossly. She dusted the palms of her gloves slightly self-consciously and started to pick the straw off her velvet riding skirts. “I suppose you are an expert on horseflesh?”
    “Not particularly.” Dev’s admission surprised her. “Not all the Irish grow up in the country, able to whisper horses from birth.” His expression darkened. “I grew up on the streets of Dublin. The only horses there were drays and sad creatures pulling rich men’s carriages.”
    Their eyes met and the breath caught in Susanna’s throat. Her heart skipped a beat, two. She thought how odd it was that life could still trick her after all she had experienced, that it could trip her up unexpectedly like a false step in the dark. She remembered being seventeen, lying in the summer grass with the stars whirling overhead and Dev turning away her questions about his childhood with light answers. She had not known anything about his early life other than that it had been poverty-stricken like her own. They had not talked much about anything, she thought now, with a sharp stab of regret. They had laughed together and had kissed with sweet urgency. They had both been so eager and so young.
    “You never told me much about your childhood,” she said, and regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth.
    Dev’s expression hardened into coldness. “That hardly matters now.”
    Susanna winced at the rebuff and the sharp reminder that none of Dev’s life was any of her business now. He and Francesca had climbed high, she thought. She had known that Dev’s parents were impoverished gentry; for him to be betrothed to the daughter of an earl and for Chessie to aspire to marry a duke’s heir was fortune hunting of the highest order. Except that Chessie would not now be Duchess of Alton. It was her job to make sure of that.
    Susanna felt a wayward pang of sympathy for Miss Francesca Devlin. Normally she was able to console herself that her assignments were better off separated from the object of their desire. The gentlemen she was engaged to lead astray were so often libertines or wastrels or simply weak-willed and unworthy. And it was true that she had no great opinion of Fitz, who seemed to embody all the vices of his class and none of the virtues: arrogance, self-centeredness and profligacy in just about everything. But even so, even if Francesca could do so much better than Fitz, Susanna admired her enterprise in trying to catch the heir to a dukedom. In some ways Francesca was an adventuress just as she was and it was a pity to ruin her chances.
    Awkwardness hung in the air. Dev, whilst showing no desire to converse with her, also showed no inclination to leave. Across the yard Fitz was deep inconversation with Freddie Walters as they admired a glossy black hunter.
    “Your sister does not accompany you today?” Susanna asked politely, slipping out of the stall.
    Dev shook his head. “Francesca is shopping in Bond Street with our cousin Lady Grant. Some last-minute purchases for a ball tomorrow, I believe.”
    “Lady Grant?” Susanna said. She could hear the odd note in her own voice and feel the sudden dryness in her throat.
    Dev had heard her tone, too. He gave her a sharp look. “My cousin Alex remarried a couple of years ago,” he said. He paused. “You lived on Alex’s Scottish estate—presumably you knew he had lost his first wife?”
    “No,” Susanna said. She could hear a rushing sound in her ears. For a