A Notorious Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

them looked lost and vulnerable when fretting over their young sisters…
    He ignored the tightening in his gut. His concern hadnaught to do with Lady Helena; he was only thinking of poor Lady Juliet. This Morgan chap might be a bad sort. Daniel hated seeing any woman suffer, but especially an innocent lass like the youngest Laverick girl.
    He’d seen enough innocents suffer during his childhood, first in the workhouse, where he’d been sent after his parents were hanged for highway robbery, and then among the smugglers. Like other men, smugglers treated their wives and children with varying degrees of courtesy—but a lifetime of ignoring the law led some to ignore common decency, and those were the men Daniel despised.
    As a boy, he could only walk away from the troubling sight of a strapping man cuffing a wee lass. As a man, he didn’t tolerate it. Many was the fight he’d got himself into because of it, which was why some smugglers had been as glad to see him leave Hastings at seventeen as he’d been to escape them.
    If he’d ever entirely escaped them. As he passed a group of young scapegallows huddled together, probably planning their next crack lay, he thought about Lady Helena’s assumptions concerning him. If she only knew the whole of it.
    Not that he was ashamed of what he’d done in his youth; it was all he’d known until Griff had come along. Even now he rarely cared if somebody heard all about his free-trading past.
    It’s just that he didn’t want her thinking of him as a “nasty, evil” man. Though he strove to deny it, he was pleased she’d come to him for help. That she’d trusted him at least a little.
    A very little. After last summer’s disaster, she thought him a true scoundrel. She’d made that damned clear. Still, he sometimes wondered what might’ve happened atSwan Park if matters had been different and he hadn’t been masquerading as Griff, if he’d truly been courting Lady Helena…
    He shook off the thought. That was building castles in the clouds, to be sure. Men of his kind didn’t sniff around well-born women if they knew what was good for them. Especially not ones as fractious and untrusting as her. If he so much as touched her, she was liable to blacken his name to every lord and lady she knew. His aristocratic clients cared naught about his past, but they’d care mightily about his insulting a lady. So Lady Helena was not for the likes of him, no matter what his pego thought.
    After he left the livery, he rode toward the Bear and Key. Once he found out what he could there, he’d check other respectable inns. He doubted that Morgan was a smuggler, but he’d ask at the flash houses anyway, just to be sure. Blackman at the Black Horse would tell him if anybody unusual had been there, and would probably know if anybody had stayed at another rookery.
    Twelve hours later, and after more silver had changed hands than he liked, he had nothing to show for his efforts—which relieved him. Nobody had seen Morgan or Juliet, aside from the proprietor at the Bear and Key, and then only long enough to sell them a mite to eat. So it was probably just an elopement after all.
    And if Lady Juliet wanted to marry some low chap who was after her modest dowry, who was he to stop her? Besides, this Morgan might truly be in love with her. The only one to say otherwise was Lady Helena, and God knew he couldn’t take her word for it.
    As his horse trotted into St. Giles near midnight, he spotted Clancy’s gin shop. He started to pass it by, but then hesitated. Clancy was a friend to smugglers and Daniel’s only connection to the old crowd. If the Irishman hadn’t heard anything about Will Morgan, there was naught to be heard, and Daniel could set Lady Helena’s mind at ease with a clear conscience. Besides, a dram of gin would be just the thing now.
    Daniel liked Clancy—everybody did. The Irishman was a swiller’s favorite publican—jovial and generous with his pouring, not to mention