The Indian Maiden by Edith Layton Read Free Book Online

daughter’s hand. But there was no great hurry; she could remain available for at least a few more months. After all, a man with a full stomach can afford to peruse the menu and keep the waiter waiting. Then, too, there was the matter of the American girl, Miss Hamilton. The duke owed her grandfather a favor and showing off the chit with his Mary would do no harm, even though, as it became increasingly clear, it would do neither of them any especial good. But then, Mary didn’t need any benefits from the relationship, and the American girl certainly didn’t seem to want any.
    For instance, the duke thought, looking over to where the young people were congregated before he went off to the card room with some other gentlemen, look at the chit now. Unusual style, but pretty with it, and with a fortune coming from her grandfather to improve her all out of recognition. Foreign to be sure, American to boot, so not quite the thing for a gentleman with both name and funds to his name. But she might do well enough for some young sprig whose family would be pleased to see him finally settle, and settle comfortably at that.
    And there she was, surrounded by the likes of young Greyville, who, granted, once was not worth a look, but who was now sure to be old Crowell’s heir, and Gilbert North, a younger son but one with a fine estate in the Midlands, and Porlock and Trowbridge, both a bit rackety to be sure, but each with a manor and a townhouse in his pocket. And who were all her smiles for? The Earl of Methley, who had an old title, a castle, two manors, and a townhouse, but all mortgaged up to the rooftops and every bit of it for rent or sale to save it from the auction block including, obviously, from his presence here, the owner of these honors and properties himself.
    The duke sighed; he’d told Godfrey he’d present his girl to society, and he had, but he couldn’t prevent her from wasting herself. He was her host, not her jailer or banker. Perhaps, he mused, as he entered the card room with thoughts of more perfectly matched suits in his head, he’d have his own lady, or Mary herself, have a word with the girl before she ruined herself entirely. But had the duke lingered on longer, he might have changed his timetable a bit and hauled his guest away to have that word with her himself, at once.
    “A real rattler,” Lord Greyville said with some pleasure, after a roll of thunder had silenced the conversation in the room, “but don’t tell me, Miss Hamilton,” he sighed, “I know, you’ve got worse than this sort of thing going on every night at home.”
    He’d been a bit disgruntled since the American girl had so far bested each one of his boasts of the horrors and dangers his own home offered, especially when all he had to contribute were a few apocryphal ghosts, which he couldn’t produce on demand anyway. Had he but known it and pushed the matter further, the spirits in question would have carried the day, or the night, and clanked away with the honors uncontested. Her homeland held a great many wonders but wasn’t old enough to be properly haunted, a fact for which Miss Hamilton was profoundly grateful, as she didn’t relish the thought of spectral visitations, feeling she had enough of her own phantoms to cope with.
    Miss Hamilton was a fine looking female, Lord Greyville thought; he especially liked those large and speaking eyes. Though he’d always preferred blond and curling tresses, there was no denying she had a first-rate shape, or else he wouldn’t have complimented her on her blue frock tonight; he wasn’t a man to comment upon fashion unless manners demanded he explain his stares. But it made a fellow feel very small to be constantly told, even if only by inference, by a smashing young woman, that she thought he lived in a land as safe and tepid as her bathtub.
    But Miss Hamilton surprised and gratified him this time by only saying quietly, in response to his challenge, “Oh no, I think