Tempting the Bride by Sherry Thomas Read Free Book Online Page A

sucked in a loud breath. Hastings turned around to the sight of him frantically feeling his pockets. The telegram tucked inside his sleeve, Hastings meandered to Martin’s chair and dropped the telegram on the floor.
    “Something the matter?” he asked.
    Martin turned around and exhaled in relief at the sight of the telegram next to Hastings’s shoes. “Nothing. I dropped a cable—that’s all.”
    Hastings picked it up and held it out facedown toward Martin. “This one?”
    “Yes, thank you, sir.”
    Martin pocketed the telegram. But this time, instead of returning to his seat, he bade Hastings good day and walked out of the room.
    The bastard was going to the Savoy Hotel.
    There was no inherent malice to Martin. But he was born without a spine of his own and always yielded to whichever person exerted the greatest influence on him. On the matter of his marriage, he’d deferred to his mother. Earlier in the Season, he’d obeyed Fitz. And now he’d lethimself be once again persuaded by the forceful Helena Fitzhugh.
    Hastings didn’t know whom he wanted to punch more, Martin or himself. Why did he still care? Why did he persist in manning his temple in the Sahara, praying for rain, when all about him the evidence of his failure stretched as far as the eyes could see?
    On their own, his feet carried him toward the door. If he was going to drown his sorrows in whiskey, he preferred to do it at home, in the privacy of his own chambers, where his heartache would be visible to no one but himself.
    Someone pulled him aside.
    “You could be right after all, Hastings,” Monteth whispered. “I ran into Martin outside just now and tried to bring him in here, but he gave me all sorts of shifty reasons why he couldn’t have a drink with me.”
    “A man not wanting to have a drink with you, Monteth, is not exactly reason for suspicion.”
    “You don’t understand.” Monteth looked about the largely empty room and lowered his voice even more. “This morning I saw a letter the missus was writing. It said, ‘I will catch him in the act very soon.’ And guess to whom it was addressed? ‘My dear Alexandra’!”
    Alexandra was Mrs. Martin’s Christian name.
    “My goodness,” Hastings heard himself respond, sounding calm, almost detached. Or perhaps he was merely in shock, although a sharp cold was beginning to spread between his shoulder blades.
    “Precisely. I tried to bring Martin back in here, where he can’t get into much trouble. But as I told you, he wanted none of it.”
    “Right-ho,” Hastings managed. “Keep me abreast ofany interesting developments, will you? I must be off now. My lady awaits.”
    He strolled toward the door, when it was all he could do not to sprint.
    “Your lady?” called Monteth behind him. “But you haven’t a wife.”
    Nor did Hastings want one who preferred another man. But should things go ill, his bachelor days would be numbered.
    M artin was no longer outside the club. Hastings hopped into a hansom cab and asked for the Savoy Hotel and great haste. It did not escape his attention that he might again stand guard while she trysted with Martin—but today he’d almost volunteer for the odious duty, if only he could thwart Mrs. Monteth.
    As the hansom cab approached its destination, he saw Martin enter the hotel, looking left and right as he went, radiating quite the aura of a man who knew he was up to no good. Hastings wasted no time in alighting from the hansom. He crossed the lobby to the clerk’s station. “The Quaids’ room.”
    “Room five on the top floor, sir.”
    “I was told there would be a key waiting for me,” he fibbed.
    “I’m sorry, sir. My instruction was that only the first person to ask for the room would be given a key.”
    “And was the first person to ask for a key the gentleman of a minute ago?”
    “No, sir. I gave the key to the lady who came a few minutes before him.”
    Martin had not instigated this tryst, judging by the cable he’d