Beyond A Wicked Kiss Read Online Free PDF Page B

Occasionally there was a comment cursing it, but it presented little hardship as their carriages came forward on the street to collect them. From time to time she would see Mr. Dunlop step down to the sidewalk and call for a hack. One always came quickly, the drivers having been waiting for just this opportunity.
    Her spirits flagged when an hour of this activity passed and he did not appear. She could not imagine there were many gentlemen left inside. More than three score had already absented themselves from the establishment. It did not look so large a place as to accommodate another exodus of the same.
    Dunlop opened the door and made a small, deferential bow of his head. "Your Grace. Shall I bring a hack?"
    West wondered at what point he would no longer feel a prickle of alarm at being addressed in such a manner. Your Grace. He had been at the club only two days past and had been greeted politely but without this rather disconcerting obeisance. He really did want to plant someone a facer.
    "I'm for walking this evening," he said. "It's bracing, don't you agree?" West could see that the footman thought he was quite mad to eschew the offer of a hack, but there was no opinion offered to that effect. There was a trace of mockery in West's tone as he said, "Et tu, Dunlop?"
    "Me, Your Grace?" Dunlop swallowed hard. "I don't know what you mean."
    West supposed that he didn't. "You are not so easy with me as you were two days ago."
    "Have I given some offense? I assure you, I have meant none."
    Seeing that he was making the man uncomfortable, West abandoned the subject. Dunlop couldn't very well point out that two days ago West had been a gentleman, true enough, but also a bastard in no anticipation of that ever changing. He sighed. He would have to depend upon South, North, and East to deal with him as they always had and make no allowances for this sudden change in the status of his birth and station. "My friends took to their carriages, I imagine."
    "Yes," Dunlop said. "Indeed they did. Not above a half hour ago."
    West knew very well when the others had left. He had assured them he was all of a piece and encouraged them to go back to hearth and home. He stayed behind to nurse the last of his brandy and consider what was to become of him in light of his father's surprising final declaration. It wasn't enough that the dying man made some explanation to those gathered at his bedside for the death watch, but West had it from the solicitor that the duke had composed a document a sennight earlier that told the whole of it.
    Naturally, West had questioned the solicitor as to his sire's lucidity, hoping to hear that he had been, in fact, completely out of his senses. Mr. Ridgeway, not understanding that West was in no way desirous of the title, lands, fortune—or the responsibility—dashed his hopes by assuring him repeatedly that the old duke was as sharp as a tack right up until the moment he called for Meg and seemed to see her come for him at the side of his bed.
    West was not the least softened toward his father upon hearing that he had cried out for Meg in the end. He remembered how often his mother had cried similarly for the duke and how rarely he came. If she was hovering at his bedside, West hoped it was because she intended to point the way to hell. She surely had not arrived to lead him to that part of heaven where she resided. Even the Almighty could not be so forgiving as to grant the late Duke of Westphal a place there.
    West tapped the brim of his beaver hat so that it rested on his head at a proper roguish angle, set a wry smile on his lips, and started down the steps. He had a light tread and the patter of the rain was barely disturbed by it. He turned right on the sidewalk toward his home, his long stride marking the distance to the corner quickly. He paused as he stepped down to the street. It was the narrowest of hesitations, so slight that he doubted it had been noticed. Because of the thickening fog, he did