Read Online The Coachman's Daughter by Gayle Eden - Free Book Online Page B

daughter
treated as such.
    Deme had never in his life had to face a
father or the guardian of someone he had been intimate with. It was
a discomforting experience, to say the least. However, it also
seemed apt that the first time he did—it would be Mulhern’s.
    What he said to Patrick in reply was, “I have
no vice, sin, or flaw that Haven has not witnessed. She has no
illusions about me. She’s never ignored or excused them, nor
allowed me to make them other than they are. There was only one
person who did likewise, and that is Lord Montgomery.
    Up until tonight, I would have said Haven
Mulhern and I dislike each other intensely. She, for good reason,
and I, because she never gives a bloody damn about who I am and
refuses to fit any category I mentally put her in. She has always
been there to save me from myself, true. Every time I try to answer
why, I know it is not the right one. Haven does only what Haven
wants to do.”
    “And what about tonight?” Patrick asked
softly.
    Deme looked away and shoved a hand thorough
his hair. “My initial reason for kissing her was the usual. After I
had, after I realized I was far from detached, I forgot—anything
else.”
    Feeling Patrick’s gaze on his profile, Deme
finally turned his head to meet it.
    The man sighed and then murmured, “Come to
the apartments after six this evening. I believe Haven is going to
visits with Lady Lisette then. Be discreet. What I have to say, I
haven’t yet shared with Haven.” Patrick sighed again. “I suppose it
is time.”
    When he had gone, and the door shut, Deme
murmured, “Bloody hell. And stared at it before he found his coat
and hat and left.
    Outside of the coach house, it was a deep
gray fall morning, surreal and heavy with fog. He needed the walk
to the manor house to clear his head. He was bloody well good at
making things worse, was he not? Only this time, Deme did not
intend to leave it as it was. Sitting there those hours after she
left, he knew he could not dance his way out of this. For the first
time in his life, he had felt…alive.
    Later, entering the house by the library
doors, then going up to his chambers, He divested his coat and hat
in his sitting room, where a fire was fresh laid. He continued to
the bedchamber and watched a foggy dawn manifest into day, while he
sat in the window seat and smoked.
    His valet entered and ran his bath sometime
later.
    Deme told him, “When his grace is awake and
has his breakfast, will you tell him I would beg a word with him
before noon?”
    The valet looked at him and bowed. “Yes, my
lord.”
    Deme nodded and turned to stare sightlessly
out the window, finally hearing the valet run his bath. When the
man left, he prepared a pan, shaved and then saw to bathing and
dressing.
    He’d requested only coffee, and spent the
morning hours unlike he had ever done, sitting, looking at
nothing—seeing his life from the time he had finished university.
At some point, he remembered that misty field at dawn. He had
discovered Selene’s trickery on the ride back to her estate. No
tears, no regret or mourning, but a lust, a crazed kind of victory
in her eyes—that turned his blood cold. Later still discovering he
was not the first, she had tried to engage to rid herself of
William. She had died, two years ago he had heard. Lived her life
with a string of lovers. He did not care. He did not feel anything
but relief. All the acts, she had performed for him; convincing him
William was no worse than an animal, made him sick.
    “The Duke will see you now.”
    Deme glanced over, having not heard Mossley’s
tread.
    He stood and walked past the man, then went
into the hall and down spiraled stairs. Servants were preparing for
the dozen or so guests. They curtseyed or greeted him as he passed
them on his way to the study.
    He knocked, and his grace bade him enter.
    “Is ought amiss?” His father looked him over,
turning from the French doors with his coffee and cigar. Deme never
sought audience