Blackstone's Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

by the fireplace. “If he is alive, he’s likely being kept away from notice, somewhere where his presence won’t rouse curiosity, but not far from the prince’s party.”
    “So, not far from Hammersley House. What may we do?”
    “Do nothing, Miss Hammersley. Unless you wish your brother dead.” Lord Chartwell abandoned all pretense of offering comfort. He simply rose, signaling an end to the conversation. “A little cooperation from you is all we require, Hammersley. We have retrieved your son’s possessions from the ship. We’d like you to look at them with our man to see whether anything strikes you as out of the ordinary. Where should we send them?”
    Violet turned to Papa, staring ahead unseeing, and took his hand. “To Frank’s room, and we should send for Preston, Frank’s valet. He’ll know better than any of us whether anything is missing.”
    * * *
    Blackstone supposed that if one had to meet one’s first love after a bitter parting and years of separation, it was best to have the upper hand. He had all the advantage. He knew the moment was coming. He had time to prepare his countenance. He had a job to do.
    He had the further advantage of seeing Violet Hammersley before she saw him. She was crossing the landing at the top of the grand vulgar stairway of the mansion her father had built with his banking fortune. The whole house was a monstrosity that dominated one of the newer squares north of Mayfair, and the entry’s soaring white marble steps with their iron filigree balusters and red carpet, were a particular offense against good taste.
    Violet’s face was closed in a tight frown and her wine-colored silk skirts made a rustle like a rushing stream. Blackstone could see at a glance that she had grown into her beauty. Styles had changed, but the new fashion of locating a woman’s waist somewhere about her ribs suited Violet well. The downward V of the bodice was meant to flatten a woman’s chest, but in Violet’s case only served to heighten her charms.
    She turned to her papa and picked up her skirts with the practiced gesture of a woman sure of her movement, anticipating the stairs. He had perhaps two seconds to arrange his face into a bracing sneer. He had known the news of Frank’s disappearance would hit her hard. He watched the next blow fall, not without satisfaction.
    Her startled gaze met his, and in her unguarded expression he read a brief tumultuous history of their past before her papa caught her stumble and steadied her.
    He had wished in that moment of freefall on the
Redemption
to see the flash of those dark eyes again. Now he steadied himself with the reflection that getting what one wished for rarely measured up to the expectation.
    George Hammersley glared down at him, a staked bear, his black hair peppered with gray now, but his height and bulk undiminished. He disengaged himself from his daughter’s hold, setting her unresisting hand on the banister and turning to the government’s man. “This man cannot be the man you mean. You can’t foist this fellow on us, Chartwell. Don’t you know who he is? He’s the very blackguard that broke my Violet’s heart.”

Chapter Four
    “Had they fixed on any other man it would have been nothing; but his perfect indifference, and your pointed dislike, make it so delightfully absurd!”
    —Jane Austen,
Pride and Prejudice
    Violet watched Blackstone start up the stairs, tall, lean, unhurried. He did not take them two at time as he once had, but her father’s calling him a blackguard had no apparent effect on the cool, mocking face. She knew that expression well. It was the face he’d shown her at their parting, and it had erased all earlier images of him. She did not remember what he looked liked when he made a joke or when he was about to kiss her. This cool, detached face was the one he wore in her memory whenever a recollection of him surfaced like a bobbing piece of wreckage after a storm.
    “Was this your idea?” She