Vicar's Daughter to Viscount's Lady by Louise Allen Read Free Book Online

space. She was still falling. ‘I am sorry, I am afraid I do not know how I should address you.’
    ‘Well, I am Miss Abbotsbury, but everyone calls me Miss Dorothy, my dear. Now, have you had your supper?’
    ‘Yes, Miss Dorothy, thank you.’
    ‘And have you brought a nightgown and a toothbrush? Elliott, where are you going?’
    ‘Home, Cousin.’ He paused at the door. ‘I was just about to bid you both goodnight.’
    ‘Without kissing Miss Shelley?’ Miss Dorothy simpered. ‘Such unromantic behaviour! I am not such a fierce chaperon as all that, Elliott.’
    ‘Of course not. Arabella.’ He came and took her hands in his and looked down at her face. It was an effort not to cling. She had known him a few hours and now this stranger was all she had. ‘It will be better in themorning, you will see.’ And then he bent and kissed her cheek, his lips and breath warm for the fleeting moment of contact. Bella had an impression of claret and spice before he straightened up and she made herself let go. ‘I will collect Miss Shelley at eight, Cousin, if an early breakfast will not inconvenience you.’
    ‘Not at all.’ The chaste kiss appeared to have satisfied Miss Dorothy’s romantic expectations. She beamed at him as he left, then turned to Bella. ‘Well, my dear, I expect you would like to go to bed, would you not?’
    ‘Yes, please, Miss Dorothy.’ At last a question she could answer with perfect honesty and without having to think. The cosy, cluttered room was beginning to sway slightly. ‘That would be delightful.’
    Elliott sat in the closed carriage outside the Dower House at a quarter to eight the next morning and made mental lists. It was that or pull out the flask of brandy secreted in the door pocket and drown every one of the obligations Rafe had landed him with. Especially this one.
    It would have been a perverse comfort to be able to mourn his brother and perhaps he was, even if what he was mourning for was the brother he never had: the close friend, the trusting companion. Rafe, jealous and suspicious, had never wanted to allow anyone close, even at the end.
    But maudlin thoughts about brotherly love, or the lack of it, were no help in dealing with a neglected estate, over a hundred dependents, financial affairs that were tangled beyond belief and this latest obligation.
    He was, it seemed, to be married to the plain daughterof an obscure vicar. Why could he not have done what she asked and pensioned her off with enough money to support the fiction of a respectable widow? His damnable conscience, he supposed. Sometimes Elliott thought he had been given his brother’s conscience as well as his own, for Rafe had certainly not appeared to possess one.
    Yesterday evening it had been very clear what he must do, where his duty lay as a man of honour. If she had come to him after the child had been born, then he would not have offered marriage, for that would not have legitimised the baby. But she had come and he had been given the opportunity to do what was right.
    All his adult life, it seemed, he had been attempting to make up for the damage Rafe had wrought to the estate, to his dependents, to those who crossed his path, and until now he had never been able to do more than stop one young sprig blowing his brains out after Rafe had ruined him at cards. Now all the wreckage had landed at his feet, as though a great storm had thrown it up on to a beach, and he must try to repair everything at once.
    The little country lass had been so desperately bedazzled by his irresponsible rake of a brother that she had gone against everything she believed in—he had no doubt that she had been a chaste and virtuous young woman. But why should that surprise him? Rafe Calne had possessed the power to fascinate even the most intelligent women. It had always mystified Elliott how he had done it.
    He rarely had trouble attracting female interest himself, but none of the women concerned everappeared to have suspended