Read Online The Untamed Bride by Stephanie Laurens - Free Book Online

carriages are spoken for. Miss Duncannon herself took the last of our post chaises.”
    “Fortuitous,” Del murmured. “I was wanting the carriage for her.”
    “Well, then.” Bowden grinned. “All’s well.”
    “Indeed.” Del pointed to the room to the right of the foyer. “The front parlor?”
    “Aye, sir. Go right in.”
    Del did, shutting the door behind him.
    With white plaster walls and heavy timber beams crossing the ceiling, the parlor was neither overlarge nor cramped, and boasted one of the wide bow windows looking out on the street. The furniture was heavy, but comfortable, the pair of chintz-covered armchairs well-supplied with plump cushions. A highly polished round table with four chairs stood in the middle of the room, a large lamp at its center, while a crackling fire sparked and flared in the grate, throwing welcome heat into the room.
    Gravitating toward the hearth, Del noticed the three watercolors above the mantelpiece. They were landscapes depicting green pastures and meadows, lush fields andrichly canopied trees beneath pastel blue skies with fluffy white clouds. The one in the middle, of rolling heathland, a vibrant patchwork of greens, caught his eye. He hadn’t laid eyes on such landscapes for seven long years; it seemed odd to gain his first sense of home via pictures on a wall.
    Glancing down, he drew out the letter from his aunts; standing before the fire, he scanned it anew, searching for some insight into why the devil they’d thought to saddle him with the duty of escorting a young gentlewoman, daughter of a neighboring landowner, home to Humberside.
    His best guess was that his doting aunts had some idea of playing matchmaker.
    They were going to be disappointed. There was no place for a young lady in his train, not while he was a decoy for the Black Cobra.
    He’d been disappointed when he’d opened the scroll he’d selected and discovered he hadn’t picked the original letter. Nevertheless, as Wolverstone had made clear, the missions of the three decoys would be vital in drawing out the Black Cobra’s men, and ultimately the Black Cobra himself.
    They needed to lure him into striking, and for that they needed to reduce his cultists sufficiently to force him to act in person.
    Not an easy task, yet by any reasonable estimation it should be within their collective ability. As a decoy, his role would be to deliberately make himself a target, and he didn’t want any extraneous young lady hanging on his arm while he was so engaged.
    A tap on the door had him hesitating, then he called, “Come.”
    It was Cobby.
    “Thought you’d want to know.” Hand on the knob, his batman hovered by the door he’d closed. “I ducked back down the docks and asked around. Ferrar arrived over a week ago. Interesting thing is he had no bevy of natives with him—seems there was no room left on the frigate for more than him and his man.”
    Del raised his brows. “Definitely interesting, but no doubt he’ll have had cultists coming in on other ships.”
    Cobby nodded. “So you’d think. But it does mean he won’t necessarily have all that many just at present. Might have to resort to doing his own dirty work.” Cobby grinned malevolently. “Now wouldn’t that be a shame?”
    Del smiled. “We can but hope.”
    He nodded a dismissal and Cobby left, closing the door behind him.
    Del glanced at the clock ticking on a sideboard. It was already after three, and what daylight there was would soon fade. He fell to pacing slowly before the fire, rehearsing suitable words with which to break the news to Miss Duncannon that, contrary to his aunts’ arrangements, she would be heading north alone.
     
    It was well after four o’clock, and he’d grown increasingly impatient, before a feminine voice in the foyer, well modulated yet with an unmistakably haughty tone, heralded the return of Miss Duncannon.
    Even as Del focused on the parlor door, the knob turned and the door swung inward. Bowden held