Seducing the Beast by Jayne Fresina Read Free Book Online

pleasantly. “My sister thought I might not be welcome.”
    “Can you be trusted to behave?”
    “I’ll try my damnedest.” Tongue tucked into her cheek, she returned to the admiration of her sister’s embroidery, the sharp pins of Eustacia’s angry scrutiny pricking at her.
    “Gabriel Mallory comes again this evening,” said her cousin. “Do not embarrass me, as you did yesterday.”
    “How did I embarrass you?”
    “You spoke to him of horse…breeding.”
    “He spoke of it first, when he talked of his brother’s stables and fine stud horses.”
    Eustacia wouldn’t listen to excuses. “Do not talk at all in future, unless remarking on the weather. That is surely a safe subject, even for you. And please refrain from guzzling the wine,” she added. “And leave some of the food to my other guests.”
    Repressing her laughter, Maddie agreed to follow her cousin’s orders. Eustacia turned to look out the window, watching, no doubt, for her lover. Suddenly remembering her failed mission, Maddie thoughtfully considered her cousin’s potential usefulness. Eustacia entertained a great many gentlemen in the evenings and she might have access to important people. At least, she liked to act as if she had her finger on the very pulse of court life.
    “What do you know of the Earl of Swafford, cousin?” Maddie asked. “Is it very difficult to get an audience with him?”
    Eustacia’s face never warmed with any color. It was often painted white to hide her freckles, and now even her green eyes faded to a moldy hue. “The Earl of Swafford is a vile, vicious monster. He is vengeful, cruel and heartless. He will do all in his power to separate me from the man I love. Why seek an audience with that ogre?”
    “The Earl of Swafford is Master Gabriel Mallory’s elder brother,” Grace whispered.
    Ah, now she understood their cousin’s venom. Gabriel Mallory was the latest prey for whom their cousin primed her marital trap, and although he walked blithely into it, his elder brother, as Eustacia now angrily exclaimed, formed one, large, hairy obstacle in her path. Disapproving of the relationship, he swore to put an end to it.
    With three dead husbands to her credit, folk disdainfully called their cousin the “Scarlet Widow”, which Maddie considered an injustice. By making three wealthy marriages to old, possibly senile gentlemen, Eustacia had kept her scapegrace father solvent for the last few years, herself well-fed and clothed, but why should she be slandered for taking matters into her own hands, assuring her own survival? Certainly, with a mother dead, a half-brother exiled and a father in debtor’s prison, no one else would do it for her.
    Young Gabriel Mallory, potential husband number four, was a rare prize, the complete opposite of Eustacia’s last unfortunate spouse, if the gruesome portrait hanging in the gallery was a true likeness. Handsome and even-tempered, Gabriel was also good-hearted to a fault, but Maddie now discovered the young man scarcely dared move a hair on his fine head without his elder brother’s approval, and it was possible their cousin’s affair had only outlasted the winter because the Earl stayed abroad. News of his imminent return to England had put Eustacia in a nervous temper, for although she’d never met the man, she’d heard enough tales of his legendary rages to fear for her own scrawny neck.
    “If you thought to tempt him into a pardon for Nathaniel,” she said, casting another scornful glance at Maddie’s snug bodice, “think again. I hear he is incapable.”
    “Incapable of what?”
    Eustacia’s plucked brows wrinkled like pulled stitches. “You know very well.”
    She looked at her sister for explanation, but Grace, blushing prettily, bent even further over her embroidery.
    Her cousin continued. “It is impossible to get an audience with him. When at court he keeps himself shut away in his apartments.”
    “Why? Is he so wretchedly ugly? I heard he limps and