Once Tempted by Elizabeth Boyle Read Free Book Online

alone, you can drop the act.”
    “Fine with me.” Aquiles shrugged. “Guess you should be thankful she isn’t yer mother. Egads, no wonder yer cousin lit out of London like he did. That woman frets more than a Lisbon whore at confession.”
    Though Robert wholeheartedly agreed with Aquiles’ rather forthright assessment of his aunt, he didn’t feel quite comfortable giving the man’s statement credence. “You should have more patience with her,” he said. “She loved her son very much.”
    “Then she was the only one,” Aquiles muttered, as he went about his task of setting out Robert’s shaving accessories. “Dishonorable bastard.”
    Robert didn’t feel all that honorable himself impersonating his cousin and leading his aunt to believe that her only child was still alive.
    “Will you look at this bit?” Aquiles was saying as he held up a long, starched and laced cravat. “Better get that fancy-boy maid of yours up here to tie this around your neck—I might slip and hang you with it.” The man laughed at his own rough humor.
    “Do you mean Babbit?” Robert asked, referring to the rather flamboyant valet his aunt had hired for him.
    “Bah! Rabbit would be a better name for that useless one. He couldn’t start a fire if he was up to his arse in kindling and holding a lighted torch.” Aquiles eyed once again the perfectly pressed cravat.
    Robert knew his old servant was quite disdainful of the other man’s talents and place in their life. “I doubt we will be calling on Babbit for anything other than ironing and polishing.”
    “Fancy that,” Aquiles said, mocking the man’s accent and manners.
    Robert laughed. To Wellington’s plans for the Bradstone deception Aquiles had been a last-minute addition. He’d been a servant-cum-bodyguard in the constantly-moving Danvers household for as long as Robert could remember. And when the middle Danvers’ son had announced his intention to take a commission in the army, Aquiles had packed his bag and followed Robert.
    “Not about to let him get his arse shot off,” the half-Irish, half-Spanish blackguard had been heard to mutter. And so he’d become Robert’s unofficial batman. As it turned out, Aquiles’s rather colorful past, fluency in the languages of the Peninsula, and Catholic leanings often paved a smooth course on Robert’s forays into enemy territory.
    Aquiles leaned forward and asked, “Did you find anything out about her?”
    “No,” Robert said. “Like Pymm said—it’s as if she vanished that night.”
    “Women!” Aquiles huffed, his arms crossed over his chest, his back against the door. While his stance looked like one of indifference, Robert knew the man had one ear finely tuned to the hallway beyond, listening for anyone who might interrupt their discussion. “What will you do now?”
    Robert was about to say he hadn’t the vaguest notion, when in the hallway a chattering group of maids passed by, busy with their final preparations for the fête. Both men stilled until the noisy prattle died away.
    “I hate this place,” Aquiles muttered. “Too many interfering females.”
    “If we could just find that one female, we’d be bound back to Wellington on the first ship, my friend,” Robert told him.
    “Don’t see how that little bit o’ muslin could disappear like that and for all these years. What if she met with foul play? Given what we’ve learned about that cousin of yers, he may well have done that poor—” Aquiles’s assessment ended abruptly when suddenly the door to the room burst open, sending the man staggering forward.
    In his floundering wake hustled Lady Bradstone. She glanced first at Aquiles, whom she spared a disapproving sniff, and then at Robert.
    “Gracious heavens!” she announced, her hands going to her ample hips. “Robert, you aren’t dressed. The first guests will be arriving in less than an hour, and you must be ready to greet all our friends.”
    “My apologies,” Robert told her,