Allison Lane Read Online Free PDF

delicately.
    “Don’t turn that vacuous façade on me,” warned Randolph.  “I know you too well.  Your own trunk is just as likely to be crammed with books.”
    “How dare you impugn my reputation as a care-for-naught?” Sedge demanded theatrically.  “It will more likely be stuffed with quizzing glasses and an assortment of hats.”
    “Or cravat pins and watch fobs.”  Sedge had become the quintessential dandy in recent years, his style copied by half the young bucks in Town – along with his gestures, his apparent interests, and his bored drawl.  Even long-established fribbles turned to him for leadership now that Brummell was gone.
    “I would rather it held jewelry than a stack of nightshirts.”
    “Or a collection of evening shoes.”  Randolph’s light tone was suddenly forced.  They had reached a narrow pass.
    Too narrow.  Rocky cliffs squeezed the carriage between them, their crumbling surfaces barely a yard away.  A stand of pines clustered near the crest, entangling their branches overhead to plunge the coach into darkness.
    He suppressed a shudder, fingering the card case to keep the breathlessness at bay. 
    Normally, carriage travel did not bother him, for his sported oversized windows that offered spectacular views of the countryside.  But this pass closed them in as tightly as if they had driven into a cave.
    The card case slid smoothly across his skin, twisting, turning, its jeweled surface cool under his stroking fingers.  Its style was one he had seen nowhere else, so his grandmother must have commissioned it from her own design.  She had presented it on his twenty-first birthday – her last gift, for she’d died only a month later, plunging the duke into a melancholy that had lasted nearly three years.
    Randolph shifted his gaze to the other window. 
    Nothing but rock. 
    She had been the one person who had understood how much he hated being closed in.  When they were together, her calm acceptance had helped hold his panic at bay.  So the case had become a talisman, linking him with her calm, reminding him that one person had not considered him a freak.  Over the years, the case had become his good luck piece, a charm that protected him from harm.
    He needed it now.  Rain whipped through the pass, propelled by swirling winds that threatened to slam them into a cliff wall.  Lightning crackled, followed immediately by crashing thunder.  The horses snorted in terror.
    His thumb traced the jeweled design as John Coachman shouted encouragement to the team.  He closed his eyes, visualizing how sunlight glinted on the bright colors that formed the Symington crest, recalling the love that had blazed in his grandmother’s eyes whenever she looked at him.
    “We should have stopped when the rain worsened,” he said, hoping Sedge would attribute his nervousness to concern over the weather.  This creeping terror was unmanly, but no matter how hard he’d tried, he had never found a way to defeat it. 
    “But we are nearly there,” Sedge reminded him.  “If that last ostler was right, it should only be a few more miles.”
    “Which will take well over an hour.  Longer if we have to dig the coach out of another ditch or clear mud from the roadway.”
    Sedge laughed.  “It has certainly been an instructive journey.  How many ditches have we landed in?”
    “Six,” he replied after a quick calculation.  “These boots will never be the same.”
    Another laugh.  “I thought I was the dandy.”
    “Unlike you, I only brought one other pair.  And your imitators would be appalled if they could see you now.”  Yet despite lacking both valet and a change of clothes, Sedge somehow contrived to look elegant.  His own appearance would never compare.  Even in the best of times, he preferred comfort to fashion.  At the moment, between mud, rain, and this endless journey, he could easily be mistaken for a vagrant.
    “Do you think Lady Elizabeth will do?” asked Sedge, changing