Read Online A Season for Love by Blair Bancroft - Free Book Online

Viscount Frayne rose from his seat.
Around the room newspapers lay unheeded in gentlemen’s laps. “How
do you know he’s back?” he inquired softly.
    “ Paid an urchin to watch his house,”
the gentleman countered swiftly. “Told him to fly straight here the
minute he saw Longville’s coach.”
    “ Was the duke alone?”
    “ That was the odd part,” the gentleman
frowned. “Urchin told me Longville had a young woman with him and
some sort of dragon, a chaperon, one supposes. And a boy. Thought
that last was a hum, myself, a child’s imagination.”
    “ Thank you,” Tony murmured. And sat
down before his legs buckled in full view of society’s most
elite.
    “ I wonder if our jolly gentleman is not
counting his chicks too soon,” Sir Chetwin muttered. “’Tis nearly
four days to the wedding. Just because Longville’s back don’t mean
he intends to have her.”
    “ I might not be able to put a bullet
through Longville, Willoughby, but I can jolly well manage to put
one through you,” Tony growled.
    “ Sorry. I have a sad addiction to
realism,” the baronet confessed.
    “ You still don’t think he’ll have her?”
Peyton Trimby-Ashford looked as appalled as he sounded.
    “ It’s a queer kettle of fish,” Sir
Chetwin pronounced.
    “ Indeed,” Tony muttered. “If you will
excuse me, gentlemen, I must be off. I rather think I prefer to
beat my prospective brother-in-law to the door of Worley
House.”
    “ If he intends to go there at all,”
Peyton intoned mournfully.
    “ Then I know how to find Longville
House,” said Anthony Norville, Viscount Frayne, heir to the Earl of
Worley, and protector of sisters.
     
    “ I daresay there’s a great scrambling
toward the betting books,” said Lady Eugenia through lips as tight
as bowstrings.
    “ I said nothing about bets!” her
brother disclaimed. Hastily.
    “ You forget the years I spent with the
army,” Jenny reminded him, without rancor. “Men will bet on
anything, from a cockfight to the gender of Lord Anybody’s
next-born child, to which gentleman will win a courtesan’s favors.
Why should they not wager on the Duke of Longville’s marriage? ’Tis
irresistible, I’m sure. Tell me, Tony, how will the duke’s return
affect the odds?”
    Lady Eugenia, suddenly aware her voice had
risen in a most unladylike manner, ducked her head, sinking her
teeth into her lower lip in deep chagrin. She had revealed more
than she had intended. As dear a brother as Tony might be, she
clung to her privacy, unwilling for anyone to know the full extent
of her hurt. She would not escape, she feared. No doubt Tony would
pounce upon her brave show of indifference, recognizing it for the
false façade it certainly was.
    Yet—sterling brother that he was—all Tony
said was, “He’ll be here, Jen. Give Longville time to wash off the
vestiges of travel, and he will be here.”
    But Jen had caught the bit between her teeth.
“He has no choice, is that your meaning, Tony? The Duke of
Longville cannot, in all conscience, fail to speak to the woman he
is supposed to marry in four days time?”
    “ Even he must have realized by now,” Tony sputtered, “that he could
not simply go off like that, without any explanation.”
    “ But he did,” Lady Eugenia stated
flatly. “So what makes you think the great Duke of Longville has
recovered any sense of what is due his betrothed?”
    “ Very well,” Tony snapped, “if you wish
to think the worst, Longville will come, if only to find some way
to break the engagement. I’m sorry, Jen,” he added swiftly. “It so
happens I think you and Longville are suited. You’ll make him a
good wife. I’ve spent more than a week as furious with him as you,
but I think you must be realistic. Give him an opportunity to
explain.”
    “ Do not throw the baby out with the
bath water,” Jenny muttered between clenched teeth.
    “ Exactly.”
    “ That’s all very well for you to say,”
his sister shot back. “ You are
not