A Matter of Scandal Read Online Free PDF Page A

allow a female to bring your estate to ruin?”
    “It’s not as desperate as—”
    “It will be, if you allow this to continue!” Folding the paperwork, he jammed it into his pocket. “ I won’t allow this to continue.”
    He strode out of the office. A barked inquiry to Hobbes informed him that the headmistress had arrived on horseback, so he commandeered one of his uncle’s mounts and went after her.
    She had apparently decided to take the morning to savor her victory, because he caught up to her less than a mile from the manor, on foot and leading a small sorrel mare.
    “Miss Grenville!” he bellowed, charging up behind her on his uncle’s big bay gelding, Cornwall.
    She jumped, spinning around to face him with one hand to her breast. And Greydon forgot what he’d been about to say.
    Large hazel eyes, wide and startled, gazed up at him, and her soft, full lips formed a perfect, soundless oh . The chit from the roadside. The one he hadn’t been able to get out of his thoughts. The one Tristan had gone into Basingstoke this morning to find.
    “ You’re Miss Grenville?”
    The oh snapped into an annoyed line. “I am Miss Emma Grenville. Miss Grenville was my aunt.”
    Was . “You’re the headmistress of that blasted Academy.”
    It wasn’t a question, but she nodded anyway. “Yes. And thank you for your condolences about Aunt Patricia.”
    Grey narrowed his eyes. He had no damned intention of being chastised by a chit who looked barely out of the schoolroom. “You’re just…a girl. You can’t be old enough to—”
    One fine eyebrow lifted, mocking him. “I amfive and twenty—a grown woman, by any definition. I suppose, though, that you didn’t charge out here to inquire after my age. Or did you, sir?”
    “Your Grace,” he corrected.
    The surprised look came into her eyes again. She should never play cards , he thought abruptly. He could read her from a mile away.
    “You’re a duke,” she said dubiously.
    He nodded. “Wycliffe.”
    Miss Emma Grenville stared up at him for another moment, while an absurd feeling of triumph ran through Grey. He’d found her, and Tristan hadn’t. She was his. As he had the first time he’d set eyes on her, he knew precisely what he wanted to do with her. And it would involve silk sheets and naked skin.
    “Wycliffe,” she mused. “Greydon Brakenridge. One of my friends spoke of you.”
    “Which friend?” He doubted any of a glorified governess’s friends would be acquainted with him.
    “Lady Victoria Fontaine.” She revised that. “I mean Victoria, Lady Althorpe.”
    “The Vixen?”
    She must have heard the disbelief in his voice, because she put her hands on her hips. “Yes, Vixen.”
    “And what did the Vixen say about me?”
    A touch of amusement entered her eyes. “She said you were arrogant. Now, I’m pleased to have made your acquaintance, Your Grace, but I do have a class waiting for me. Good day.” She walked on.
    “You didn’t sign my uncle’s rental agreement.”
    She stopped, then looked up at him again frombeneath the brim of her prim green bonnet. “That matter, Your Grace, is between Lord Haverly and myself.”
    His towering over her didn’t seem to be intimidating her in the least, but it was making him feel like a bully. Grey swung out of the saddle. “If you don’t wish to pay the increased rent,” he continued, torn between irritation at her statement about his arrogance and the desire to untie the green bow under her chin and pull off that ridiculously strait-laced bonnet, “you can find another location for your school.”
    The petite headmistress lifted her chin. “Did Lord Haverly ask you to ride me down and threaten me?”
    Somehow this wasn’t going quite the way he’d envisioned. “I’m stating facts.”
    “Hm. The fact , Your Grace, is that you obviously don’t approve of the education of women. The fact is, Haverly belongs to Dennis Hawthorne, and I will conduct any and all negotiations with him. If