Read Online A Bride by Moonlight by Liz Carlyle - Free Book Online Page B

perhaps, with a view of the sea?”
    “But not another lease,” she warned him. “I am done with travel, Mr. Bodkins. I want . . . I want a home. One that is mine . One I cannot be turned out of—or sent away from—on anyone else’s whim.”
    The old man sighed. “Give me a few days, Lisette,” he said, “and I shall see what can be done.”
    A t the end of an afternoon wedged with too many appointments and fraught with inner conflict, Royden Napier arrived home in Eaton Square to a blessedly silent front hall and the scent of roasting poultry wafting up from his kitchens. The efficient Mrs. Bourne, of course, for this was the first Thursday of the month, which meant guinea fowl basted with bacon fat and a buttery three-root mash.
    The scent was heartening, even absent an appetite.
    Indeed, under the gentle hand of Mrs. Bourne, his entire house ran like clockwork. Some might have called it a life of dull predictability, but in his line of work one too often waded through life’s chaos and the tragic aftermath. In his private life, he strove for order and unruffled calm, a goal by and large achieved, save for the occasional entrance of a woman into his life.
    Lady Anisha Stafford had been just such a woman—or could have been. Napier had met her months ago, and had been immediately struck by her warmth. When she’d eventually asked to see Lazonby’s old case file, he had agreed, perhaps foolishly. Yes, he had been attracted to her—and she had not been indifferent to him. That, however, had quickly come to naught, perhaps for the best. She was far above his station.
    And yet, she wasn’t, was she?
    On a soft curse, Napier tossed aside his hat, his attention veering back to his awkward conversation with Sir George. Had he made it known he was the grandson of Viscount Duncaster—and suddenly heir apparent to the title—would Lady Anisha have looked more favorably upon his suit?
    Certainly her elder brother Lord Ruthveyn would have.
    Yet he had not told her. And Napier was not so lacking in self-knowledge as to misconstrue his own motivations. Yes, he had wanted her to desire him for who he was, not what he was. But a part of him had simply not wished to take the time away from his work for the niceties of a proper courtship.
    Though on this one occasion, he had been very tempted. Tempted to surrender his unruffled calm for something that had felt, yes, a little like chaos.
    But he had dragged his feet, and the lady, it seemed, had cast in her lot with Lazonby.
    Ah, well. At the great age of four-and-thirty, Napier was on his way to confirmed bachelorhood and his aunt Hepplewood be damned, unless some plump, pretty widow turned up to warm his bed and then persuaded him to make a fool of himself. Still, it would be no woman of Lady Hepplewood’s choosing—of that he was bloody well certain. The Wiltshire branch of his family had not dictated to the London Napiers in going on four decades. He’d be damned if they’d start now.
    Yanking Sir Wilfred Leeton’s file from his valise, he went into the passageway that opened on each side to his front reception rooms. In an uncharacteristically reflective mood, he paused to look around with new eyes at the gleaming wooden floors, the velvety Wilton carpets swept to within an inch of brand new, and the gleaming porcelain, marble, and hints of gilt that adorned the whole of it.
    Did he want more than this?
    It was not opulence that surrounded him, no. But it was upper middle-class elegance, at the very least, and since boyhood he had lived here with all the security and certainty that came from a life lived without want.
    Yes, whatever Nicholas Napier’s failings, his son had lacked for little. And, as Sir George had pointed out, all that security and a fine Belgravia town house had been topped off by an education to rival any gentleman’s. All this despite the fact that Nicholas Napier had been, initially, nothing more than a low-level bureaucrat married to a