Three Weeks With Lady X by Eloisa James Read Free Book Online

elasticity, as well as rubber’s tendency to melt in warm weather.
    “She is accompanied by a letter addressed to you,” Iffley replied with a sniff. He was endowed with a long, thin nose that gave him the air of a well-bred greyhound, and his sniff ably conveyed both reproach and disdain.
    There was only one reason a strange child would show up, unbidden, at his doorstep. Yet it couldn’t be a child of his. His father’s lamentable example had made him vigilant in that respect. “How old is this child?”
    “I would be reluctant to guess at her age; my knowledge of such matters is negligible.”
    The man suffered from a folie de grandeur, in Thorn’s estimation. Perhaps he would banish him to Starberry Court. “Where is she now?”
    “Frederick is in charge of all deliveries,” Iffley said, extending the letter on a silver tray. “Therefore, she is at the service door, awaiting your instructions.”
    Thorn’s eyes fell to the scrawled handwriting and his heart squeezed, then beat faster. “Bloody hell,” he said softly. “That bollocking arsehole.” Even touching the envelope gave him a terrible feeling in his gut, like the time he ate a pickled herring with a greenish tinge. He’d been too hungry to be put off by its peculiar taste.
    “Bring the child,” he said.
    Iffley left and Thorn forced himself to look at the handwriting again. But he didn’t open the letter, as if not reading it would somehow change the information he knew was inside.
    Moments later, the door opened and the butler reentered, followed by one of his footmen, Frederick, who carried a little girl of perhaps three or four years. Her hands gripped Fred’s lapel so tightly that her knuckles were white. Her face was hidden behind a tangled cloud of yellowish hair, and her legs looked pitifully thin.
    Thorn took a deep breath and came from behind his desk. “Well. What is your name?”
    Instead of an answer, a stifled whimper broke from the girl’s mouth. The sound was infused with terror, and Thorn’s chest tightened. He couldn’t bear frightened children.
    “Here, open this and read it aloud.” He handed the letter to his butler, then plucked the child from the footman’s arms. “Fred, you may return to the entry. Thank you.”
    The little girl looked at him for a second; he had an impression of gray eyes and a thin face before she buried her head in his chest. Her bony little back curved against his arm.
    “Hell,” he said, walking over to a sofa and sitting down, only belatedly remembering that one shouldn’t curse in front of children. “What’s your name?”
    She didn’t answer; he felt, more than heard, a sob shake her body.
    Iffley cleared his throat. “Shall I summon the housekeeper?”
    “Just read the letter to me.” Thorn curved his arms around the child so that she sat within a nest, tight against his chest. That had generally soothed his sisters, back in the first days after they’d been rescued by their father and would wake up terrified night after night.
    He too had been scared by the huge mansion and the odd, eccentric duke who had appeared out of nowhere, scooped him and five other children off the streets, and declared his paternity. After which His Grace had looked down his big nose and announced that his name was Tobias. It was a name he’d never heard before, and he still didn’t like it.
    Once Thorn turned out to be the eldest of the Duke of Villiers’s rescued bastards, he rarely sat down without having a child, if not two, hanging on him, and the sensation of holding a small body on his lap came back immediately. He stroked the child’s back and looked up to find Iffley staring at him, jaw slack. “Read the damned letter, Iffley.”
    There was a crack as the wax seal broke, and Iffley cleared his throat. “There has indeed been some mistake, sir,” he said, relief ringing in his voice. “Belying the envelope, the salutation is not addressed to you.”
    But Thorn had the same warning