Rescued By a Lady's Love (Lords of Honor, #3) by Christi Caldwell Read Free Book Online

had done? He’d taken beautiful gems for his own pleasures and the consequences be damned?
    Resentment slapped her with a power that drove back all warmth. That was who these gentlemen were. Bored men, each driven by greed and opulence. “Then, perhaps Sir Henry should not have turned the bauble over to the duke.”
    Holdsworth rolled his glass between his fingers. “You do not like me much, do you?” he said, unexpectedly shifting the direction of the conversation.
    Lily curled her hands into tight balls. “I barely know you,” she settled for the most basic form of the truth—she knew him but a handful of moments and despised him with every fiber of her being.
    A chuckle escaped him, and he continued closer. “Why do you not tell me your true thoughts?” He spoke on a jeering whisper. “Tell me how you’d send me to the devil for breaking my father’s oath to you? Slap my face for stealing what you consider yours?”
    Lily bit the inside of her cheek. For the truth was, spewing all the vitriolic words on her tongue would likely be the ultimate ruin of her.
    “And that is why it was not a, what did you call it?” He arched another crimson eyebrow. “A legitimate exchange. I am a mere gentleman. Now, imagine were it the Duke of Blackthorne making such a request . With his ruthless threats to see my father’s businesses ruined, did he have any choice but to capitulate? Hmm?” he pressed, as she fell silent. Holdsworth ran a condescending gaze over her. “I expected one despoiled by that duke would have learned that family’s ruthlessness.”
    She stilled, hating that his blasted words made any kind of sense. “What do you want?” she asked quietly.
    He downed the contents of his drink. “I want you to retrieve it for me, my dear.”
    She snorted. “If you think my familial connection is anything worth mentioning that will result in the current duke turning over that great gift, then you are mistaken.”
    He opened his mouth to speak but a sharp rap at the door interrupted his words. Holdsworth looked to the door. “Enter.”
    An older servant shuffled into the room bearing a copy of a newspaper. He handed the London Times over to his new employer and then took his leave.
    Holdsworth held it out. “Read the front page.”
    She wanted to slap the paper away and throw his more order than request back in his face. Curiosity, however, pulled at her. Accepting the paper with stiff fingers, she proceeded to scan the wrinkled, slightly aged sheet. One name leaped out. Her heart stuttered a beat.
    After his disfigurement and near death at war, His Grace, the Duke of B has proven himself cursed once again. The early, tragic death of his eldest brother, George, the 7 th Duke of B is now followed by the loss of his mother, and only sister and brother-in-law at sea...
    For too many years she’d attended that family, feeding and fanning her hatred. At some point, she’d only absently skimmed the on dits about the Winters family. Angry this man would force her to delve back into a world she despised, Lily tossed the newspaper on a nearby rose-inlaid table where it landed with a soft thump.
    “Do you have anything to say?”
    “No.” Nothing that she cared to share with this man. She had read that handful of details on the new duke in the scandal sheets, but did not need to personally know the gentleman to understand very well that he’d been cursed. Then, as one who’d been cursed herself, it was easy enough to recognize it in another. And there was no doubt, someone in Winters’ line must have made a deal with the devil and the time of payment was due.
    “Humph,” he said after the protracted silence. “The duke’s sister, Lady Stonehaven, left a girl.”
    Regret tugged at her heart as it invariably did when thoughts or words of babes and children crept in. “Did she?” she managed to get out past the emotion clogging her throat. For in one reckless moment, she’d thrown away all hope or dreams of her