Untamed by Anna Cowan Read Free Book Online

simple bid for BenRuin’s notice.
    The assurance she’d received from the Duke that the affair was done was useless. They had been given to her by a boy.
    ‘You must break it off,’ she said. She wouldn’t normally tell Lydia what to do, but she was desperate. She would do anything to separate her sister from the Duke’s influence.
    ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Lydia flipped another page. ‘Oh, how pretty. I’ll have Candace make you one in yellow. It will go well with your eyes.’
    ‘The Duke, Lydia. He is not a man to play with. He is not the man to use to make your husband jealous.’
    Lydia still didn’t look at her, but her smile wasn’t very nice. ‘He is just the man for it,’ she said.
    ‘Then jealousy is not going to save your marriage. Did Lord BenRuin even come home last night?’
    Lydia stopped turning pages all at once and looked directly up at Kit. ‘You think I don’t know the Duke at all, don’t you? You are ridiculously naïve. Last night was nothing to him, a mere wave of the hand. We are speaking of a man who was once discovered by Sir Henry Wittwer in his wife’s bedroom and managed to convince the baronet he was a woman disguised as a man, seeking shelter with his lady wife from an angry lover.’
    ‘You refuse to see he will do the same to you and worse.’
    Lydia stood, and Kit recognised the look she gave her, because it had been inherited from their father. It made her sick to her stomach. ‘I will take advice from you,’ Lydia said, ‘when you outrank me.’ She left the room, the toast half-eaten on her plate.
    Kit buttered a scone and covered it in jam, then made herself take a bite. Her fingers splayed over the fine newspaper print, and she concentrated until the whirr in her brain had quieted a little, and the words made sense again.
    It was self-indulgent and silly to wish her sister would return. There hadn’t been any affection between them to rupture or set right for more than a decade.
    She forced her eye to the next story, and sat up straighter in her chair. There was a rumour that a second claim to the Darlington title would be lodged this morning, alongside Lord Marmotte’s divorce. He had told her himself that his claim had gone to the Committee for Privileges – and now a second claim would be made by a man called Albert Shrove. She was viciously glad.
    Oh. She slumped back into her chair. He was an accountant from Leeds. Kit could write in to the paper that she intended to be a baroness before the year was out and it would be less absurd.
    She read the paper all the way to the end, but Lydia did not return.
    Lydia leaned over the side of the carriage to talk to an acquaintance – Lady Isley – and Kit sat beside her, staring down at the pamphlet she held in her gloved hands. She had been longing to go outdoors, and it was a rare sunny day, if a little windy and cold. She barely even noticed.
    What kind of man would publish these words about himself? It unnerved her, because she couldn’t understand it.
    ‘Darlington,’ Lydia purred.
    Kit’s head whipped up, and there he was, coming towards them with four other riders.
    If any part of her had persisted in thinking there must be some good in him, it died in that moment. How could anyone be so lacking in moral sense – in shame?
    Her eyes lingered on his face only long enough to be sure it was him this time. It was. He looked expensive and stupid and she wished she hadn’t looked at his eyes, because they were sadder today than they had been yesterday.
    He stopped by Lady Isley and swept off his hat in greeting.
    Lydia said, ‘You have been too, too naughty. If I hadn’t such a bad reputation myself, I shouldn’t dare to be seen with you.’
    ‘But I should dare anything to be seen with you, my lady, so I am afraid you shall have to suffer your reputation a little longer.’
    Lady Isley tittered and fished for details of last night’s scandal, which the Duke easily avoided. He and his friends