Read Online Argent (Hundred Days Series Book 3) by Baird Wells - Free Book Online Page A

he would listen and wait. Nothing in his study required immediate attention, despite what he'd told the others. He passed it by, opting instead for his favorite room, the library. Settling into a deep brown leather chair, Spencer tucked himself into a corner between two high windows where he closed his eyes and soaked in mid-morning sun.
    He missed the army, the sharp sounds of drill, the synchronized volley of musket fire. He longed, sometimes, for the cheers and shouts of his men around their tents in the evening. The cacophony of London traffic with its stiff clothes and stiffer manners was hardly a substitute, and he made do instead with comfortable silence.
                  A creaking door figured briefly into his quiet moment. Household staff came and went throughout the day, not an event to break his respite.
    When a feminine sigh reached his ear, he bothered cracking an eye. Alexandra, swathed in a flattering yardage of sky blue silk, raked book spines with a knuckle. She perused the shelves across the room in silence, oblivious to his presence.
                  She looked hale and whole for a woman bedridden an hour ago. Slouching deeper in his seat, Spencer rested a cheek to his fist and watched her. She was softer today, her hair piled in a mound that was calculated to tempt a man’s hand. Light silk fell from a high-cut bodice, catching the fullness of her hips swaying with each step. Slender fingers, fingers whose touch he’d recalled in private moments, pulled down a book, cradled and inspected it, then traded it for another. He drank in her movements until she paused for a narrow red canvas tome that met her approval.
    She slid it atop a long oak table dividing the shelves from the rest of the library and tossed a crisp white apron down beside it. She snapped the chair forward, bumping the table in her eagerness, and pried back the cover.
                  Reaching the peak of self-torment, Spencer cleared his throat.
                  Her chair rocked, pages fanned and she gasped. Certain she’d go straight over backwards, he started up to catch her.
                  Recovering before he could close the distance, she pressed a hand to her chest, panting.
                  “Mrs. Rowan.”
                  Her eyes narrowed. “Were you going to say anything?”
                  He chuckled, caught. “Were you?”
                  She fixed him with a stare that he was only too happy returning. For a breath, there was something familiar deep in her gaze, a glimmer of the challenge she’d given him at the masquerade. Then it banked, cooling the blue of her gaze even as he willed it to stay.
                  Alexandra ducked her head, studying the tabletop. “I thought everyone had gone out,” she muttered.
                  Everyone, including him. Spencer took her point, hating a sting in his chest. “Everyone who wished to, has. I stayed behind because I have business to attend to, and because Lady Hastings was concerned about your health .” His last word hung between them in the library's silence.              
    Shifting in her chair, she looked away and then got up. “I should be upstairs resting.”
                  She snatched her apron, flinging something from its pocket which pelted against the floor. It struck with a sharp tinkling of glass and rolled to him over polished wood as though drawn by his curiosity.
                  She rushed him, but he’d already pinched up a long glass vial half filled with rust tinted powder. He shook its contents, squinting to identify the tiny grains. Holding it up to her wide eyes, he waved the bottle. “What is this?”
                  She swallowed, eyes fixed on her lost property, and kept silent.
                  “Hm.” Spencer pulled the chipped cork from its neck and waved