Read Online The Baron’s Betrothal: An On-Again, Off-Again, On-Again Regency Romance (The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Series) by Miranda Davis - Free Book Online

look much like her, come to think of it.”
    “She were tall,” murmured another thug.
    “A Long Meg,” the leader agreed. “And him bigger still.”
    “Did you see his eyes? Were they blue?”
    “Black as Hades,” he answered without hesitation.
    “Ah.” The baroness leaned back.  
    Her son happened to turn up in time to rescue some strange wench. Given his genius for frustrating her, he would probably become infatuated with the tall, daft stray and turn his nose up at a proper choice for the next Lady Clun.  
    Something odd was afoot at The Graces. Strange, unattached females, mad or not, did not secret themselves on de Sayre property. That Roddy hadn’t run her off was puzzling, too. This female was still a most unwelcome mystery.  
    Lady Clun detested puzzles and surprises when they involved her son. She liked to stay well informed about the baron’s whereabouts and activities because she was anxious, nay determined, to see him married and settled.
    She would have to tread carefully to learn more. She couldn’t very well interrogate Clun. He’d resent her prying — even though she did it for the good of the barony. Perhaps she’d summon the steward for an explanation instead.
    “Very well, be gone. I have no more need of you.” She turned to her Welsh seneschal, Dafydd ap Rhys and added, “Price, pay them what I owe and see they return to Ludlow without passing through the village, I’ll not have them seen anywhere nearby again. Understand?”
    “Perfectly,” ap Rhys replied with a grimace. The baroness insisted on anglicizing his Welsh name, like it or not. He did not.
    The men left with him.  
    What now?  
    As she fumed, the frustration bubbling within now boiled over and she flicked the pot dog off the table. It shattered into pieces with a gratifying crash.  
    She would learn what she could here before leaving for London to renew her acquaintance with Viscountess Presteigne and her daughter, Horatia.

Chapter 6  
    In which the baron is bared.

    The Graces

    T he day dawned clear. It was the fifth consecutive day without rain and a minor miracle in Shropshire that autumn according to Tyler Rodwell. Clun surveyed the southern reach of his estate on foot with Roddy. The baron hadn’t walked the land in almost a decade and he wanted to see firsthand how the estate fared in his long absence. Today’s tour came as a relief. He found fields dotted with neat, black-faced sheep. Prosperous tenant farmers lived in well-maintained cottages with placid milk cows in nearby pastures.  
    Halfway through their walk, Clun turned to his half-brother and said, “Thank you, Roddy. For this.”
    “My pleasure,” Roddy replied with a slight nod.  
    Tyler Rodwell was a capable steward and a man remarkably free of bitterness.
    Neither Roddy nor he had an easy upbringing. Far from it. But they’d grown up allies not enemies, as might’ve been the case with a younger heir and an older bastard son. Before Clun lay abundant evidence of that fraternal bond.  
    When he’d been Master William, Clun looked up to his older brother, circumstances of their births notwithstanding; and Roddy stood by him while living at the castle.
    The late baron had also done what he could to prevent discord between the half-siblings, accomplishing most of it by fiat. When he fathered his firstborn as an unmarried bon vivant , he acknowledged him at birth, gave him a family name — Tyler — and supported him and Agnes Rodwell comfortably in Ludlow. Two years later, Lord Clun took a proper baroness and soon after begat an heir. His legitimate son was christened William Tyler de Sayre. The name the two shared marked a connection between half-brothers the father hoped to foster.  
    When Tyler’s mother died of fever, the baron decreed that his by-blow be raised at the castle alongside his legitimate son, against Lady Clun’s express wishes; and he demanded that the boy be treated well, against Lady Clun’s natural inclination.