Read Online The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone (Lords of Disgrace) by Louise Allen - Free Book Online Page A

sorry.’
    ‘Then why in blazes is he clutching his...er...?’ The fact that he was addressing his daughter appeared to dawn on the earl and he stopped mid-sentence. ‘Brace up, man, and stop whimpering!’
    Woodruffe straightened, shot Caroline a malevolent look that made her shudder and limped back into the house.
    It was a good start. Now she had to balance her behaviour on the knife edge between giving Woodruffe a disgust of her and betraying what she was doing.
    The telescope had rolled across the terrace and she went to pick it up. It was a good instrument and there was a dent in its brass casing now. Caroline raised it to her eye to check that the lenses were not damaged, scanning round as she fiddled with the focus screw. Yes, it was working perfectly, thank goodness.
    The trees on the far hill came into sharp definition and there, strolling back to his chapel, was the hermit. He probably thinks no one is looking at him now he’s finished his performance, she thought with a smile as the tall figure turned and walked up towards the path into the trees. Again that sense of recognition swept over her and this time, without the beard and the accent to distract her, she placed him.
    Lord Edenbridge. The image swooped and blurred as her hands shook. Gabriel Stone. Petrus, the Latin for stone or rock. How could I not have realised?
    ‘I say, do take care, Lady Caroline, you almost dropped the telescope again.’ Mr Turnbull took it from her lax grip.
    ‘Thank you, Mr Turnbull. So foolish of me, but staring through it made me suddenly light-headed.’
    Somehow she chattered on, made conversation as the party drifted back into the drawing room. Gabriel Stone. Here. Why? It had to be something to do with her. He had no reason to be taking employment of any kind, let alone something as peculiar and uncomfortable as fulfilling an eccentric man’s expensive fantasies about landscape features. But what did he want?
    ‘Dinner is served, my lord,’ their butler announced, making her jump.
    Caroline got a grip on herself. Dangerous peers of the realm might be lurking in the shrubbery—literally and mysteriously—but she had a dinner party to deal with. ‘We are a most unbalanced group, are we not?’ she said with an attempt at a gay laugh. ‘Lord Calderbeck, may I claim your arm? The rest of you gentlemen must escort yourselves in, I fear.’
    She had set out the place cards with strict attention to precedence. Marcus Fawcett, Viscount Frampton, sat on her left hand as she occupied the hostess’s chair at the foot of the table with Lord Calderbeck on her other side. Woodruffe, a baron, was left watching her from his position midway down the table. She turned and began to flirt lightly with the viscount. The stare turned to a glare and young Lord Frampton sat up straighter, his expression faintly smug.
    Just as long as I do not have to deal with him as well! Caroline accepted a slice of beef with a smile and asked the viscount about his horses. From experience, he could be relied upon to bore on for hours once started on that theme, which had the dual benefits of distracting his mind from flirtation and also allowing her time to think about a certain earl.
    Why on earth hadn’t she recognised Gabriel immediately? That beard and the curling mane of hair, she supposed. And the fact that when they had met before she had been too embarrassed to study his face closely. It was that rangy body with its easy movement that had always attracted her and that was what she had recognised through the telescope.
    ‘Spavined? How distressing,’ she responded automatically to Frampton’s ramblings about one of his matched bays, then closed her ears to an account of just what the farrier had advised doing about it and what his head groom had thought.
    But what was Gabriel Stone doing here with his Welsh accent and his poetry? She would wager her entire allowance for a year that the man had never so much as rhymed a couplet in his life.