The Romantic by Madeline Hunter Read Free Book Online

the earl really would need an army to take her from us.”
    “I am sure that she knows all that.”
    Laclere looked at him. A pause stretched into an eloquent silence. Julian hoped nothing passing between them would be put into words.
    “Julian, if for some reason my sister cannot or will not turn to us for aid, I trust that you will do all that you can for her.”
    “I always have, Vergil.”
    Mr. Hampton’s house was proving a very comfortable sanctuary. Penelope did not mind her seclusion at all. Mrs. Tuttle saw to her comfort in the morning, then appeared every hour or so to inquire if anything was needed. Other than a few books from the library, Pen asked for nothing.
    Her trunks had arrived during the night, and she poked through the small one for her letters and papers. Sitting by the window that looked down on a nice garden, she studied a long document that had arrived in Naples before she left.
    It was to be a pamphlet criticizing the legal position of married women. She and several other ladies had contributed to this work during the last year. Now, with the recent passage of the bill ending slavery in the colonies, the time was ripe for their treatise to go to print. The country and Parliament were in a mood of reform. It was time to emancipate the last human chattel on British lands.
    Married women.
    She carefully read this most recent draft, penning in a few changes. They would wait until the new year before publishing it. They wanted the country to digest the recent bill before raising this issue. She had intended to return in late fall and see to its final preparation. Now she could ensure its completion more quickly.
    Unless she had to flee the country, of course. She hoped that Mr. Hampton was correct that she would not need to. She wanted very much to see this project through. Her name as an author would give it weight. It was also the only worthwhile thing she had done with her life.
    A knock on her door in the afternoon distracted her from her work. She tucked the document away and opened the door to find Mr. Hampton.
    “Is there news?” she asked.
    “Yes. May I come in? I apologize, but we can hardly go down to the library or drawing room for a conversation.”
    No, they could not. She bid him enter, and they sat in two green-patterned chairs near the window.
    He appeared indifferent to the location of this conversation, but she could not entirely ignore that he was in her bedchamber, with the door closed.
    His back was to the bed itself but she could see it plainly behind him, bright and happy with its jonquil drapery. She had slept in that bed last night, and now this man was here. It was a silly reaction to have, but she suddenly remembered the sensation of his hand on hers last night. The sparkling vitality that she had felt when he kissed her through her glove returned and danced all through her.
    “The news?” she prompted, forcing herself to look only at him and not see that bed. Except there it was, just looming in the background, provoking some alarming curiosities about Mr. Hampton and how he made love, or whether he ever did at all.
    If he did, with whom? And if he did not, what a shame, because she could not deny that there was something exciting about his dark good looks and mysterious silence and—
    “Glasbury called on Laclere,” he said, interrupting her sudden speculation on what he looked like without his coats and shirt. “He also arranged to have Dante and the Dowager Baroness Mardenford present. He demanded to know which of them had you as a guest. He dared to try and have Laclere’s house searched for you.”
    “Vergil must have been ready to call him out on that. And poor Charlotte. It was very ignoble of him to try and browbeat her.”
    “I think that Lady Mardenford is well equipped to dealwith the earl, madame. He was fortunate that she did not browbeat
him,
most literally, with her parasol.”
    She giggled at the image of that. “See, I was correct. They did not