The Devil Is a Marquess (Rescued from Ruin Book 4) by Elisa Braden Read Free Book Online Page A

reassurance: It is only a year, after all.
     
    *~*~*
     

 
     
    CHAPTER FOUR
    “A bargain is a battle of wits to which some bring pistols and others bring bricks. I leave it to your judgment which will be the victor.” —The Dowager Marchioness of Wallingham to her son, Charles, upon his sale of a champion thoroughbred to the Duke of Blackmore.
     
    Charlotte arrived at her father’s rented house just as the sun was setting. Golden light made the pale stone of the four-story structure glow yellow-orange.
    “Don’t bother, Oliver,” she told her uncle’s coachman-footman-stable-hand as he began to climb down from his perch. “I have managed well enough, as you can see.” She grinned up at him from the walkway, her bubbling joy spilling forth.
    Oliver blinked and scooted back onto the driver’s bench, touching his hat briefly. “Aye, miss. As you like.”
    “I shan’t be long.” She spun on her heel and faced the house on the north side of Cavendish Square with hope all but bursting her heart’s seams. This could be it. This could be the moment when she would be put in charge of her own life. Mr. Pryor had asked her to await his arrival, but she could not. She simply could not.
    With a deep breath, she climbed three of the four steps to the door and knocked. A manservant, as dour as a crow and suitably dressed in black, answered. “Miss Lancaster, I presume.” He stood aside and waved her in. “This way, if you please.”
    “Thank you.” She climbed the final step and entered the house, removing her gloves, bonnet, and blue silk pelisse and handing them to the servant. “May I know your name, sir?”
    The crow’s frown deepened, his bent body freezing in place as though she had asked him for directions to mythical Mount Olympus. “Townsend.”
    “Thank you kindly, Mr. Townsend.”
    He returned her stare, holding her pelisse and blue-rosette bonnet and white silk gloves in limp hands.
    “Is there some difficulty?”
    Clearing his throat, he shook his head and answered gruffly, “No, miss. Not often I am asked for my name. Most do not bother.”
    “How very peculiar.”
    He continued staring up at her, his sidelong glances making it obvious where his speechless wonder really stemmed from. He likely had never seen a woman as tall as she. However, she was much accustomed to such reactions.
    “Perhaps you could take me to my father now?”
    “Of course.”
    He led her down a corridor to what she presumed was her father’s study. The house was richly appointed, the walls paneled in white, the moldings classically simple, the floors polished wood. Tasteful and lovely though it was, she had been inside dozens of London town houses that were virtually the same. Elegant, yes, with thick carpets in the music room and dining room and drawing room, triangular pediments over the front doors, and long windows lined up in perfect symmetry. When she had a house of her own in America, it would not be a structure built from a mold. It would be unique.
    A little thrill ran from the base of her spine to the top of her head. She was not meant to be the same as all others, either. She had known that from her first breath, had felt it every moment of her five London seasons. And, as Mr. Townsend lightly knocked upon the white-paneled door at the end of the corridor, she knew with similar certainty that her days of following the ton’s orderly dance, of adhering to every rule and convention, were nearing an end.
    “Come,” the deep, graveled voice of her father said through the door.
    She grinned at Townsend as he swept it open, turned her grin upon her towering, blaze-haired father as she charged inside with long strides. “Papa. You are looking well.” She rose up on her toes to kiss his whiskery cheek.
    “How much did that gown cost me?” he grumbled, patting the back of her shoulder in his usual awkward hug. “And what has you so cheerful?”
    She chuckled lightly and ran a hand lovingly over the smooth silk