Barbara Metzger Read Online Free PDF Page A

of the gossip pages and a faithful correspondent to her like-minded London acquaintances. “They say he took to drink right after his wife died, well before Annie could have been born, and started gambling away his fortune. I’d always heard he was a dirty dish.”
    “He was pleasant to me,” Lisanne said, smiling at the memory. “I told him he had the loveliest wildflowers growing in his wood, and he said I may as well pick all I wanted, for he couldn’t make any profit off them.” She turned to Nigel. “So you see, I do have His Grace’s permission to be on the property.”
    “Not anymore you don’t, missy.” Uncle Alfred tapped the newspaper that was next to his plate. “The old duke is dead. Shot in a duel over a Covent Garden whore.”
    “Sir Alfred!” Aunt Cherise nodded in Esmé’s direction. “Little pitchers.”
    The baronet shrugged. “You’re the one who said the chit was almost ready for a London come-out. She’ll heara lot worse there.”
    Lisanne was burning to snatch up the newspaper and run to her room with it, but her uncle still held the folded pages. “The article says the heir is being notified. He’s with the army in the Peninsula. I suppose he’ll have to resign his commission and settle the estate, what there is left of it.”
    Aunt Cherise sniffed. “It’s more likely Viscount Shearingham will take up where his father left off. The young man already has a reputation for wildness. There were rumors of his being turned away from various clubs before he purchased his colors.” Aunt Cherise had to stop and think. “Money from his mother’s side, I believe. There was not enough left of his patrimony to purchase a corncob pipe, much less a coronetcy.”
    Lisanne excused herself, although no one noticed when she left. The footman did not even pull her seat back, she got up in such a hurry, eager to get to the bundle of old newspapers that was always stored in the polishing room. Yes, there he was, Major Lord Shearingham, mentioned in the dispatches. The viscount was on Wellesley’s own staff, and it seemed, from the tittle-tattle columns, that he’d made a career of equal parts daring and debauchery.
    From that day on, Lisanne made sure she saw the daily newspapers, even if they were two days late from London. She skimmed the war news, the political reporting, and the financial sections, but she studied the on dits with as much intensity as her father had studied his Greek tomes. She even paid attention to Aunt Cherise’s gleanings from her gabble-grinding correspondents.
    The new Duke of St. Sevrin was frequently mentioned for his acts of bravery, his commendations and medals. It was duly noted that he refused to sell out in the middle of the war. According to Aunt Cherise’s informants, from whom Wellesley could have learned a thing or two, His Grace hired a London man of business to engage a new bailiff, to handle the income, and to make investments until St. Sevrin was good and ready to take up the domestic reins.
    An infected saber wound wasn’t good, but it made St. Sevrin ready to leave the front a year or so later. Lisanne read the papers even more avidly. Now the news was of the swath St. Sevrin was cutting through London’s demi monde, instead of through the French forces. He seemed to favor opera dancers, from all she could gather. If Aunt Cherise and the budding debutante Esmé were examples of the females in Society, Lisanne didn’t blame him. Weighed against the rest of the gossip she read, Sloane St. Sevrin didn’t seem much worse than any other London profligate—certainly no worse than his own father. No better, either.
    Tongues wagged and turbaned heads shook in disapproval, but not Lisanne’s. She didn’t care a jot about St. Sevrin’s morals. In fact, she wished him joy of his birds of paradise, his gaming hells, his dockside brawls, whatever it took to keep him happy in London—and away from St. Sevrin Priory.

Chapter Four
    Sloane Shearingham, late