The Duke’s Obsession Bundle by Grace Burrowes Read Free Book Online Page B

messenger will be up from Morelands either later today or tomorrow, but the matter is not urgent.” The earl let out a breath, and Anna took the opportunity to stand.
    “My lord,” she interrupted, getting a personal rendition of the earl’s scowl for her cheek. “My hand needs a rest, and you could probably use some lemonade for your voice. Shall we take a break?”
    He glanced at the clock, ready to argue, but the time must have surprised him.
    “A short break,” he allowed.
    “I’ll see about your drink,” Anna said. When she got to the hallway, she shook her poor hand vigorously. It wasn’t so much that the earl expected her to take lightning-fast dictation, it was more the case that he never, ever needed a pause himself. He gave her time to carefully record his every word, and not one tick of the clock more.
    Sighing, she made her way to the kitchen, loaded up a tray, then added a second glass of lemonade for herself and returned to the library. She had been away from her post for twelve minutes but returned to find the earl reading a handwritten note and looking more thoughtful than angry.
    “One more note, Mrs. Seaton,” he said, rummaging in the desk drawers, “and then I will have something to drink.”
    He retrieved a scrap of paper from the back of a drawer, glaring at it in triumph when his fingers closed over it. “I knew it was in here.” As he was back in his rightful place behind the desk, Anna repositioned the blotter, paper, pen, and ink on her side of the desk and sat down.
    “To Drs. Hamilton, Pugh, and Garner, You will attend Miss Sue-Sue Tolliver at your earliest convenience, on the invitation of her father, Marion Tolliver. Bills for services rendered will be sent to the undersigned. Westhaven, etc.”
    Puzzled, Anna dutifully recorded the earl’s words, sanded the little epistle, and set it aside to dry.
    “I see you have modified your interpretation of the rules of decorum in deference to the heat,” the earl noted, helping himself to a glass of lemonade. “Good God!” He held the glass away from him after a single sip. “It isn’t sweetened.”
    “You helped yourself to my glass,” Anna said, suppressing a smile. She passed him the second glass, from which he took a cautious swallow. She was left to drink from the same glass he’d first appropriated or go back to the kitchen to fetch herself a clean glass.
    Looking up, she saw the earl watching her with a kind of bemused curiosity, as if he understood her dilemma. She took a hefty swallow of lemonade—and it did have sugar in it, though just a dash—and set her glass on the blotter.
    “Tolliver is your man of business, isn’t he?” she asked, the association just occurring to her.
    “He is. He sent word around he was unavoidably detained and would not attend me this morning, which is unusual for him. I put one of the footmen on it and just received Tolliver’s explanation: His youngest is coming down with the chicken pox.”
    “And you sent not one but three physicians for a case of chicken pox?” Anna marveled.
    “Those three,” the earl replied in all seriousness, “were recommended by an acquaintance who is himself a physician. Garner and Pugh were instrumental in saving His Grace’s life this winter.”
    “So you trust them.”
    “As much as I trust any physician,” the earl countered, “which is to say no farther than I could throw them, even with my shoulders injured.”
    “So if we ever need a physician for you, we should consult Garner, Pugh, or Hamilton?”
    “My first choice would be David Worthington, Viscount Fairly, who recommended the other three, but you had better hope I die of whatever ails me, as I will take any quackery quite amiss, Mrs. Seaton.” The earl speared her with a particularly ferocious glare in support of his point.
    “May I ask an unrelated question, my lord?” Anna sipped her drink rather than glare right back at him. He was in a mood this morning to try the patience of