Read Online Promise Me Tomorrow by Candace Camp - Free Book Online Page A

Castlereigh and Lord Buckminster. Perhaps they knew who she was and where she lived. He would make it a point to drop in on Bucky tomorrow and pump him for information. However long it might take, he was determined that he was going to find that girl.
     
    R ICHARD M ONTFORD, THE SIXTH E ARL OF E XMOOR , leaned back in his chair, contemplating the man standing in front of him. “Well, well…It’s been a while since we have talked, hasn’t it? Sit down, sit down.” He waved toward the chair facing his desk. “No need to stand there like a gapeseed.”
    The other man shook his head, frowning. He was younger than the Earl, and there was only a hint of gray in his hair yet. He was conservatively dressed, though his clothes were well-tailored, and his features were attractive but not memorable. He was the sort of man one might pass on the street and never notice, but anyone who met him would immediately classify him as a gentleman.
    “What is this all about, Montford?” he asked, his voice rough with irritation and something else, perhaps a touch of apprehension. “We are scarcely what one would consider friends any longer.”
    “No. One would hardly recognize in you the flamboyant youth I once knew.”
    “Flamboyant? Hardly. In a haze of opium and alcohol, more like. But as we both know, I have put that life behind me. I cannot conceive why you should wish to speak to me.”
    “It is not so much ‘wish’ as necessity, dear chap. You have heard, I presume, the gossip about this American heiress who married Lord Thorpe, Alexandra Ward?”
    “Of course. The Countess’s granddaughter whom everyone thought was dead. Is that what you called me here for—to rehash yesterday’s gossip?”
    Richard did not answer except to give him a thin, tight smile that conveyed the opposite of amusement. His visitor looked at him for a moment, trying for an air of unconcern, but the tapping of his fingers against his thigh gave him away.
    Finally, when the Earl said nothing else, he burst out, “What the devil does it have to do with me? She is your cousin, not mine.”
    “Ah, but your past is intertwined….”
    “Not with hers! I never saw the child. You said she was dead.”
    “So I believed.” Exmoor’s hazel eyes hardened in his thin, almost ascetic face. “The damned woman lied to me!”
    “I don’t know why you care. You had nothing to do with her disappearance. From what I heard it was her mother—her supposed mother—who pretended that she died.”
    “Yes, but Alexandra’s return alerted them to the fact that the other two children did not die in Paris, either. The Countess knows that this Ward woman brought them to Exmoor House.”
    “But you were not implicated, surely. I thought their disappearance was blamed on this woman who confessed, the Countess’s companion, and she is dead.”
    “The Countess suspects me. She knows that I am the only person who would benefit from the boy’s death. For all I know, that fool Miss Everhart told her I was involved.”
    “But she cannot prove it, or surely she would have by now.”
    “Yes, and I don’t want her to be able to prove anything in the future. She won’t drag the Exmoor name through the mud for no reason, but if she were able to prove that I was involved, even the fear of scandal would not hold her back.”
    “How could she possibly prove it? The Everhart woman is dead, and I certainly am not going to say anything. I have as much to lose as you.”
    Again the Earl’s lips curled up in a cruel smile. “I know. That is why I sent for you. The Countess is looking for the girl, Marie Anne.”
    The other man stiffened, his fidgeting hand going still. After a long moment, he cleared his throat nervously. “She cannot find her.”
    “They’ve put a Bow Street Runner on it. I understand that he has tracked her down to the orphanage.”
    “St. Anselm’s?” Sweat dotted the man’s lip.
    “I’m surprised you remember.”
    “How could I forget?” His