The Secrets of a Scoundrel by Gaelen Foley Read Free Book Online Page A

had no intention of letting himself start to look like some half-wild hermit from a Wordsworth poem. He’d got accustomed to shaving in near darkness, so the sunshine streaming in through the window astonished him with its beauty—and made his task much easier.
    In due time, he emerged from the bathing room, feeling like a new man. With a towel wrapped around his waist once more, he walked, barefoot, across the luxurious bedchamber to the chest of drawers with a mirror.
    There were a couple of bottles of masculine cologne on the dresser. Nick smelled each of them and chose one with a faint scent of frankincense and citrus. But before slapping it on himself, he paused and looked over at Edward, who presently returned. “Say, did Baron Burke used to wear this scent?” he inquired.
    He did not wish to smell like her dead husband.
    “No, sir,” the lad answered in surprise. “Those are just for guests.”
    “I see.” Nick arched a brow at him. “And does Her Ladyship get a lot of male guests here at Deepwood?”
    Edward blanched. “That’s not what I meant, sir. Sometimes the young master brings his friends home from school. The young gentlemen often use this guest room.”
    “The ‘young master’?” Nick echoed in confusion.
    “The current Lord Burke, sir. Phillip.”
    Phillip? he wondered, intrigued.
    “Sir, might I ask which of these clothes you prefer to wear tonight to dinner?”
    Still wary about all this, Nick prowled over and inspected his three choices. He winced at the sight of his full-dress military uniform; it was the last thing he had worn before they’d put him in his cell.
    He had been escorted by the Order’s kilted guards straight from the Regent’s ceremony at Westminster Abbey, honoring them for their service with showy medals and all pomp and circumstance, immediately north to the Order’s Scottish headquarters and down to the gloomy dungeon to pay for his misdeeds.
    At least the graybeards had spared his pride, refraining from having him shackled in front of the populace there at Westminster Abbey.
    Thankfully, they had chosen to handle his punishment as an internal matter, hidden from public view. But that was the Order way.
    “Sir?” Edward prompted.
    Nick shrugged off bad memories, determined to put the past behind him now that Lady Burke had given him a second chance. “The black merino wool.”
    “Very good, my lord.”
    While Edward went to finish getting his clothes ready for him, Nick wandered over to the box of his belongings that had been returned him. Of course, the graybeards had kept his weapons, the bastards, but what could he do?
    In the bottom of the box, he found his necklace—the one they all wore—the white Maltese cross on a silver chain, the hard-won symbol of the Order of St. Michael the Archangel. He had worn it for years like a talisman to ward off the danger that lurked in every shadow during their years of fighting the rich and highborn members of the Promethean conspiracy throughout Europe.
    In time, the necklace had come to feel more like wearing a tag of ownership that one would put on a dog.
    Now it just looked like a symbol of Nick’s disappointment in himself. He left it in the box, turned away, and started getting dressed: short drawers. He tied the drawstring. Black socks. He hooked them onto the knee straps, then pulled his white shirt on over his head. The clean white linen felt blissful against his skin. He smoothed the open V of the neck down his chest, feeling almost like a human being again.
    After pulling on his black trousers, Nick stopped cold. “What the hell?” he uttered, shocked at the change in how his clothes fit.
    They hung off him. He drew the waistband of his black trousers away from his waist, astonished to find several inches of excess fabric.
    Good God, he had kept up with his regimen of daily exercises as best he could in prison to avoid wasting away to nothing. But the restricted rations must have cost him a good stone of