Read Online Fortune Favors the Wicked by Theresa Romain - Free Book Online Page A

beloved old hound.
    â€œAfter dinner, dearest.”
    This was the last Benedict heard from the girl at table. Since he did not hear her chair drawn back, she must have stayed. Maybe even ate her food.
    Maggie didn’t mind having someone to look after her, it seemed. With the grandfather anxious and the grandmother more concerned with the ancient past than the present, Benedict wouldn’t be surprised if Maggie spent more time with servants than with her relatives.
    He had done the same himself. In boyhood, surrounded by books that seemed to mock him for his difficulty deciphering their wiggling, shifting letters, he’d often fled to the kitchen.
    Yes, he had been sick for home his first time aboard ship, but not in the sense that he wanted to return to live amidst his parents’ books. No, he missed being in a space where one felt at ease, surrounded by the clink of crockery and the splash of dishes being cleaned; of voices calm and orderly. Of errands, fetching and carrying, and the praise heaped on one for completing a task well that one did not have to do.
    That old kitchen was a boyish vision of home, but it was the last one he’d had. He wondered if he’d ever have a vision of home again.
    â€œMr. Frost.” The vicar’s wife interrupted these thoughts with her efficient accent. “You have written a book, your friend said in his letter.”
    â€œLord Hugo,” Perry corrected. “His friend is Lord Hugo Starling, though Mr. Frost calls him by his Christian name.” His tone was equal parts awe and reproach, and Benedict smiled.
    â€œIndeed. Lord Hugo and I met in Edinburgh, the year after I was blinded. We were both studying medicine—he because he has quite the quickest mind ever, and wanted to be filling it with a new subject. I, because I knew I could no longer serve in the navy and wanted something to do with myself.”
    â€œBut surely,” said Mrs. Perry, “you could not practice as a physician. Not without your sight.”
    â€œCorrect, ma’am. I knew I would not be able to do so, but it was better than sitting in my quiet chamber in Windsor Castle.”
    â€œA castle,” murmured the vicar. “You lived in a castle, and you are a friend of Lord Hugo Starling.”
    Benedict cleared his throat. “Yes, well, that all sounds a lot grander than it really was. Castles are dank and their chambers are small, and as a Naval Knight of Windsor, I’m bound there in return for my pension.”
    â€œYet you seem not to be in Windsor Castle at present,” Charlotte pointed out.
    â€œThis is quite correct. I’ve been granted a leave of absence. More than once . ” Thank God. Yes, he was grateful for the room and board and a few pounds on which to live—but it certainly came attached to strings aplenty.
    â€œMy time in Edinburgh was courtesy of such a leave of absence,” he explained. “But eventually I felt the urge to do something more than pick up knowledge for its own sake. Which was why I left off studying after a year and began hunting for something else to do.”
    â€œAnd on what did you settle?” asked Charlotte.
    â€œTraveling.”
    â€œWhat good is that?” Mrs. Perry, this time.
    â€œWhat good is the world, you ask? I cannot say until I have been to every corner of it.”
    He could hear the smile in Charlotte’s voice when she asked, “Which corners have you been to? And what did you find there?”
    â€œAh, interesting items are to be found tucked away in corners. Though the ones I’ve been to are not so rare. Truthfully, the book I’ve written—well, I shouldn’t call it a book, as for now it’s only a sheaf of handwritten papers—is notable only in that it was written by a blind man.”
    â€œThat cannot be,” Charlotte replied, “for it was written by a former sailor who also studied medicine. There are not many such people