Celeste Bradley - [Heiress Brides 03] Read Online Free PDF Page B

Rain was wont to fall at any time, carrying with it a load of the soot that hung perpetually in the skies. Damp chill turned more to damp rot in the summer months, and by now it seemed that the smell of the sewers would never be erased from one’s nostrils.
    Still, flowers bloomed brightly in green gardens and birds chirped merrily in the trees carefully nurtured around the finer houses. Pretty girls in vivid bonnets strolled arm in arm with dandies, maids and footmen trailing behind, encumbered with parcels.
    Even in this less than fashionable neighborhood just past the edge of Mayfair, the denizens of Primrose Street had sought to earn the name. Tending more toward window boxes than full gardens, the terraced houses still wore as many flowers as could decently be crammed in. It was rather shabbily charming if one bothered to notice.
    Standing outside Lady Tessa’s rented house at the ungodly early hour of noon, Graham could have cared less for flowers or bloody birds or even pretty girls. Hehadn’t slept all night, instead forcing himself to try to read through the piles of papers that Abbot had left behind.
    Graham wasn’t a stupid man, he knew that, but he felt like one this morning. How could he possibly inhale a lifetime of information and training in time to save Edencourt?
    And do you even want to? Wouldn’t it be easier just to let it lie?
    His father had apparently thought so. Graham himself had been inclined to take after his father for the first time in his life—until he read about the conditions in which the few remaining cottagers lived.
    His cottagers. His people.
    Which was ridiculous, when one thought about it. What sort of idiot system of inheritance would leave
him
in charge of actual people? He’d never even kept a pet!
    Yet the weight of his responsibility, once engaged, would not rest. He had stuffed as much information into his mind as it could handle at the moment, then he’d left Eden House and walked restlessly through Mayfair to this familiar address.
    All he could think was that Sophie would know what to do. Which was more idiocy, of course. Sophie was a gently-reared young lady from a little manor house in the country. She was intelligent, that was true, but scholarly translations would not help him now.
    Still, Sophie was the only person in London who actually gave a damn about him. This would change, he knew. Once his title was announced he’d be besiegedby a sudden influx of “friends.” Not as many as if he were rich, but enough to be very annoying.
    Until then, he wanted one more day of being just Lord Graham Cavendish, younger son, a man of charm and leisure and little account. As he climbed the steps to the rented house, he didn’t think to ask himself why he wanted to spend that last day with no one but Miss Sophie Blake.
    Graham entered the music room. “Sophie?”
    Her papers were everywhere, spread out in some chaotic version of order that only Sophie understood—and beware the person who moved a single sheet!
    No Sophie. He was about to look elsewhere when he spotted one of her slippers on the floor next to the window embrasure. Then he saw the stocking-clad toes dangling just past the curtain. His lips twisted wearily. “Got you.”
    When he came closer, he realized that she wasn’t hiding. She was asleep, shoes off, paper-covered knees curled up, spectacles awry and all. Graham’s grim smile softened. Poor lass. She was working too hard on her blasted translations—and Tessa was likely making her life miserable, something that Tessa excelled at.
    Carefully, Graham cleared the translations from Sophie’s lap and set them aside—keeping them in precisely the same order, of course. Then, with gentle fingers, he removed the spectacles from her nose and from behind her ears.
    Without the wire and glass, her familiar bony features seemed rather vulnerable and unknown. She was a true case, this one. Just look at her! Endless legscurled awkwardly beneath her like a