Read Online A Dangerous Courtship by Lindsay Randall - Free Book Online

she sojourned to Yorkshire on his behalf disturbed Julian.
    The possibility that she may have shared her ardor with this faceless beau disturbed him even more.
    Agitated by the train of his thoughts, Julian turned his mind to the other startling thing she'd said to him: that she was willing to pay handsomely for his help. A position of employment, to be exact, at one of her father's many estates.
    Clearly, the lady thought him to be nothing more than a luckless vagabond with no steady income, and who could fault her for that assumption? He wasn't exactly acting or looking civilized these days, and he hadn't in too long a while.
    Julian's eyes hooded. He wondered what Lady Veronica's reaction would be if she ever learned that she had offered such positions as gardener, stable help, and groundskeeper to one Julian Andrew Maxmillian Masters, the seventh Earl of Eve.
    The circumstances of Julian's ascension to his distinguished title were a memory right out of hell. The night the title became his was one that would be forever burned in his soul.
    His mood turning black as he recalled the exact moment he became Earl of Eve, Julian got to his feet and rifled one strong hand through the shagged lengths of his dark hair. He needed a shave and a haircut, but he'd vowed not to do either until the day he uncovered the vile culprit who had torn his life asunder.
    Now that his hearing was restored, he could get on with that grave matter. He'd waited ten long months for this moment and was eager to be gone from Fountains and the desolate existence he'd known here. He needed to speak in person with the two remaining people in this world whom he trusted: his solicitor in London and his manservant, Garn.
    But before he vacated Fountains, Julian knew he'd be making one last round of her ruinous grounds. He would, blast it all, search for the packet the lovely Veronica was so keen on discovering. He owed her that much, at least, for his graceless ravishment of her soft mouth.
    Just as he turned to head for a way down off the ledge, Julian spied some movement—a small shadowy figure—near the abbey's outer walls to the north. Julian eased back into the darkness near the window, losing himself in the blackness there.
    The figure darted quickly under an archway leading inside the abbey's great hall below and then, scanning the area and seeing no one, reached into the folds of his threadbare coat.
    It was the figure of a lad, Julian noted. Probably no more than twelve years of age. And scrawny, to boot, but fleet—like the urchins inhabiting New Bond Street who were always ready to pick a deep pocket or two.
    The lad withdrew a small bundle, bent down, and quickly stuffed it into the base of a pillar where the masonry had begun to crumble.
    Julian stepped out of the shadows. "Ho! You, there!" he shouted.
    The urchin looked up, freezing in midmotion for the fraction of a second. He seemed to be terrified by the mist threading about his legs, by the desolateness of Fountains and by the sudden appearance of a stranger when he'd thought to be alone in the great, hulking ruins. Eyes growing wide, the lad backed away from the pillar, falling to his rump as he did so, then skittering backward like a crab until, at last, he gained his footing. Once he did, he turned and ran.
    Julian, long since in motion and now nearly to the ground, jumped the last few feet from the heights he'd just traversed. As soon as his feet hit the ground, he started running, hoping to head the lad off before he could escape. Julian had a few questions to ask the boy: namely, for whom the package was destined and whence it had come.
    But the lad, quick and tiny, navigated the area of Fountains better than Julian ever had, and he was soon lost in the mist that had, within the last few minutes, grown knee-high to Julian's frame.
    "Bloody hell, " Julian said.
    He knew he'd not be finding the boy now. The lad had had too much of a head start before him.
    Hoping the urchin didn't come