Read Online Lady Eve's Indiscretion by Grace Burrowes - Free Book Online Page B

some, and if that doesn’t serve, I’ll turn up pious.”
    So casual, and yet as she sat there on the bench, scuffing one slipper over the gravel, she was a battle-weary woman.
    On impulse, he reached over and plucked her a yellow daffodil.
    â€œWhat’s this?” She accepted the flower in a gloved hand, bringing it to her nose for a whiff.
    Yellow daffodils for chivalry.
    â€œYou look in need of cheering up, but I see my offer was arrogant.”
    â€œWhat offer was that?”
    â€œI was going to assist you to assess the prospects of the various swains orbiting around you, and you were going to keep me informed regarding the ladies circling me.”
    Now that he put the scheme into words, it sounded ungentlemanly, but Eve was not taking offense. She sat straighter and put the flower carefully to the side on the bench.
    â€œYou’ve been traveling off and on for the past few years,” she said. “This can put a man behindhand when in Polite Society.”
    Egypt, the Americas, anywhere to escape his father and the man’s scathing tirades.
    â€œI’ll be keeping to home territory for the foreseeable future, and you’re right: I have no idea who is overusing her laudanum, who owes far too much to the modistes, and whose mama plays too deep in unmentionable places.”
    Now that he enumerated a few of them, the pitfalls for an unwary suitor seemed numerous and fraught.
    Eve regarded her slippered toes. “Before the boys married, we used to gossip among ourselves terribly. They never told us everything , I’m sure, but they told us enough. We did the same for them, my sisters and I.”
    And this was likely part of the reason no Windham son had been caught in any publicly compromising position, nor had any Windham daughters. And now the Windham infantry had been deserted by both cavalry and cannon.
    While he had ever marched alone, which was a dangerous approach to any battle. “What do you know of the Staines ladies? They’re very determined, almost too determined.”
    He asked the question because he genuinely wanted to know and had no one to ask whom he could trust. He also asked because he sensed—hoped, maybe—that Eve missed providing this sort of intelligence to her brothers.
    â€œLady Staines has a sister,” she said, dragging one toe through the gravel. “She chronically rusticates in Northumbria, but it’s said she’s quite high-strung.”
    â€œAh. And the daughter?”
    Eve bit her lip then picked up her daffodil. “She did not make a come out until she was nineteen. Nobody knows precisely why, and Lady Staines does not permit the girl to socialize at all without her mama hovering almost literally at her elbow. We tend to feel sorry for Mildred, but she ignores all friendly overtures unless her mother approves them.”
    And here he’d been half-considering offering for the girl just to trade the misery of the unknown for the misery of the known. He spent another half hour on that bench, listening to Eve Windham delicately indicate which young ladies might hold up well in a highly visible marriage, and which would not.
    â€œYour recitation is unnerving, my lady.” In fact, what she’d had to say, and the fact that she was privy to so much unflattering information, left him daunted.
    â€œUnnerved you in what regard?”
    â€œI would never have suspected these polite, graceful young darlings of society are coping with everything from violent papas, to brothers who leave bastards all over the shire, to high-strung aunts. It puts a rather bleak face on what I thought was an empty social whirl.”
    She did not argue. She sniffed her little daffodil. “Has this been helpful?”
    She was entitled to extract her pound of flesh, so he was honest, up to a point. “You have been extremely helpful, and to show my gratitude, will you come with me to Surrey next week to make King