Trapped by Scandal by Jane Feather Read Free Book Online Page B

is the elder?”
    â€œAlec, by two minutes,” Hero replied.
    â€œI thought there was rather more than an ordinary family resemblance between you,” William observed.
    Another alerting rap at the door brought another figure slipping stealthily into the kitchen, and the introductions began again. Despite her irritation at being discussed sometimes as if she weren’t there, Hero was pleasantly surprised to find that none of the men actually seemed shocked at her presence or her disguise. Their London selves would have been horrified at the very idea of Lady Hermione in such a place and in such dress, but then, she reflected, in their present incarnations, they were hardly recognizable themselves. And they’d seen and experienced more than enough horrors to find nothing shocking. She settled quietly on a corner of the bench, listening to the account of the rescue of the Latour family as men continued to slip in from the dark beyond the kitchen door.
    It was close to midnight when the door finally opened to admit the Marquis of Bruton. He closed the door behind him and stood for a moment leaning wearily against it as his eyes ran across the gathering, counting his fellow conspirators. “Good, we all made it,” he said with a sigh, his shoulders relaxing as he pushed himself off the door. Then his green gaze fell upon the figure at the end of the bench.
    â€œ Hero . What the hell are you doing here?”
    The intensity of relief at the sight of her brother had stunned Hero into immobility at first, but now she jumped up from the bench and ran to him, flinging her arms around him. “Thank God you’re safe, Alec. I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I went to the St. Juliens’ h ô tel on Rue St. Honoré, but it had been ransacked. The mob were burning and looting in the courtyard. I was so afraid you had been caught up in it.” She leaned back in his arms, looking at him as if she would devour him whole. “How could you leave me all these weeks without a word? Didn’t you know how frantic I’d be?”
    â€œThere was no way to get word to you,” her brother said, his hands on her shoulders, gripping tightly. “It never occurred to me you’d come into this pit of hell after me.” He gave her a little shake.
    â€œPerhaps it should have done,” William remarked. “From what little I’ve seen of your sister, Alec, I would have expected nothing less.”
    Alec took his eyes from his sister at last and blinked rapidly, as if to dispel a dream. “How . . . how did you find her? Or, I mean, how did you get here, Hero?”
    â€œIt’s a long story. Why don’t you sit down? You’re dead on your feet.” Hero pushed him towards the table, once again in charge of the situation. Her brother made no demur. Since early childhood, he had relied on his sister’s strength as she had relied upon his. Quarreling was something quite foreign to them both.
    He sat down and drank deeply from the wine cup someone passed him. “Tell me this story.”

FIVE

    W illiam sat at his ease, one hand curled around his wine cup on the table, one leg crossed casually over the other, watching the twins as Hero told her brother the story of her journey and the last few days in Paris. He noted almost absently that while the family resemblance was powerful, Hero’s hair, escaping now from its pins as she talked animatedly, was of a much richer and more complex hue than her brother’s, and her eyes seemed larger, wider apart, and a more vivid green.
    William had spent little time in the land of his mother’s birth and was not well versed in the intricacies of the aristocratic families that made up England’s elite Society. He knew almost nothing about the Bruton family, except that the Marquis possessed vast estates in Hampshire and vast wealth as a result. He himself had a more modest estate in Norfolk,