Anita Mills Read Online Free PDF

length of expensive green silk nankeen, then spent more than a week sewing herself her first new dress in two years. And there was another four guineas wasted on the rest of her toilette, including her missing paisley shawl and now-water-soaked kid slippers. Her hand crept to her newly cropped hair, feeling the flat curls, wishing she’d not done that either. What was it Burns had said about the best-laid plans? That they gave grief and pain for promised joy?
    But she hadn’t wanted to arrive on her grandfather’s doorstep looking utterly poor and out of fashion. Perhaps it was merely a matter of pride, but she’d not wanted to give him any reason to pity her, to think she meant to hang on his sleeve. All she’d wanted was to meet him, to discover the family that had refused to acknowledge her mother’s existence. But Quentin Fordyce had lied to her. Her grandfather hadn’t wanted to see her after all.
    She looked down again at her dress, seeing the torn fabric and the mud, and she wanted to weep as she thought of the expense of it. And she’d not even counted the ten shillings she’d paid Clara Smith, a neighbor’s dresser, for the miserable haircut. She had to stop thinking on that also, she decided wearily, else she’d drown in her own self-pity.
    Beside her, Mr. Bascombe turned in his sleep, and his head slipped once more to rest against her shoulder. For at least the tenth time she pushed him gently away, then pulled the carriage rug up again.
    “Sorry,” he mumbled without actually waking. His head again fell back against the padded top of the seat, stretching his neck, and he resumed snoring softly. For a moment she studied him, wondering how he came to be with the one called Deveraux. Despite his apparent wealth, he was physically and socially clumsy, and even on short acquaintance it was obvious he lacked the intelligence and the daring of the other man. How very different they were in appearance also, Bascombe pale, slender, fair-haired, and amiable, Deveraux dark in more ways than his looks.
    When she looked up, she thought she detected a faint, slightly derisive smile on Mr. Deveraux’s face. It was, she supposed enviously, that he dreamed.
    To take her mind from the ache in her head and her plummeting spirits, she dared to consider his face openly, studying the incredible handsomeness of it—the thick black hair that waved slightly where it lay against his forehead, the black lashes that fringed above the strong planes of his cheeks, the straight, well-chiseled nose that reminded her of one on a Greek bust. Unlike so many of his class, his chin was defined and the line of his jaw strong, solid. If he had a flaw, ’twas that the rather sensuous mouth curved downward, giving him the appearance of a cynic much of the time. When he was awake, he seemed to have a wry, derisive quality, a devil-take-you attitude that set him apart from other gentlemen.
    But if he possessed none of that, she still would have been struck by the size of him. She judged him to be six or seven inches taller than herself, well-muscled and quite solid for a gentleman. She closed her arms beneath the carriage rug, remembering the strength of his grip when he held her on the roof. No doubt he was the sort who patronized Jackson’s boxing saloon—when he was in the country.
    Still, he was a fugitive crossing England, and she could not help wondering precisely why the authorities sought him. What had Mr. Bascombe said to him? Can’t be found with another body—got to escape ere you are taken… The awful thought went through her mind that she’d possibly jumped from the proverbial frying pan into the fire. But just now, as she watched him sleep, he did not seem so very dangerous.
    Dominick Deveraux. She racked her aching brain, trying to place where she’d heard the name Deveraux before, and it came to her. The notorious Marquess of Trent was a Deveraux. Of course. But surely this man was not Trent, for the scandals of that