Read Online The Prize by Brenda Joyce - Free Book Online

smiled and sipped
his own brandy now.
    The boy trembled
with real fear. How could this stranger know so much?
    "You have
fanciful imaginings, my lord." Devlin smiled coolly.
    "You have yet to
win a knighthood, Captain O'Neill," Liverpool said.
    Devlin stiffened in
surprise. So it was to be a gift—after a blow, he thought.
    Once, his ancestors
had been kings, but a century of theft had reduced them to a life of
tenant-farmers. He had changed that. His stepfather had happily sold him
Askeaton when he
    had come forward with
the bullion to pay for it. His grand home on the River Thames had been
purchased two years ago when the Earl of Eastleigh had been forced by financial
circumstances to put it up for sale. Liverpool knew Devlin had used the navy
to attain the security that comes with wealth. What he did not know—could not
know—was the reason why.
    "Do
continue," he said softly, but he had begun to sweat.
    "You know that a
knighthood is a distinct possibility—you need only follow your orders."
    The ten-year-old
boy wanted the title. The boy who had watched his father fall in an act of
cold-blooded murder wanted the title as much as he wanted the wealth, because
the added power made him safer than ever before.
    Devlin hated the boy
and did not want to feel his presence. "Knight me now," he said,
"and barring any unforeseen and extenuating circumstance, I will sail to
America and threaten her shores without inflicting any real harm."
    "Damn you,
O'Neill." But Liverpool was smiling. "Done," he then said.
"You will be Sir Captain O'Neill before you set sail next week."
    Devlin could not
contain a real smile. He was jubilant now, thinking about the knighthood soon
to be his. His heart raced with a savage pleasure and he thought of his mortal
enemy, the Earl of Eastleigh—the man who had murdered his father.
    "Where would you
like your country estate?" Liverpool was asking amiably.
    "In the south of
Hampshire," he said. For then his newly acquired country estate would be
within an hour of Eastleigh, at the most.
    And Devlin smiled.
His vengeance had been years in the making. He had known from the tender age of
ten that in order to defeat his enemy, he would have to become wealthy and
powerful enough to do so. He had joined the navy to gain
    such wealth and
power, never dreaming that one day he would be ten times wealthier than the man
he planned to destroy. A title added more ammunition to his stores, not that
it truly mattered now. Eastleigh was already on the verge of destitution, as
Devlin had been slowly ruining the man for years.
    From time to time
their paths crossed at various London affairs. Eastleigh knew him well. He had
somehow recognized him the first time they met in London, when Devlin was
sixteen and dueling his youngest son, Tom Hughes, over the fate of a whore. The
wench's disposition was just an excuse to prick at his mortal enemy by wounding
his son, but the duel had been broken up. That had only been the beginning of
the deadly game Devlin played.
    His agents had
sabotaged Hughes's lead mines, instigated a series of strikes in his mill and
had even encouraged his tenants to demand lower rents en masse, forcing
Eastleigh to agree. The earl's financial position had become seriously eroded,
until he teetered on the verge of having to sell off his ancestral estate.
Devlin looked forward to that day; he intended to be the one to buy it
directly. In the interim, he now owned the earl's best stud, his favorite
champion wolfhounds and his Greenwich home. But the coup de grace was the
earl's second wife, the Countess of Eastleigh, Elizabeth Sinclair Hughes.
    For, during the past
six years, Elizabeth had been the woman so eagerly sharing his bed.
    And even now, she was
undoubtedly waiting for him. It was time to go.
    Waverly Hall had been
in the possession of the earls of Eastleigh for almost a hundred years—until two
years ago, when a cycle of misfortune had caused the earl to put it up for
sale. The huge