Cheryl Holt Read Online Free PDF Page A

ledgers.“Could you please be about your business? Why are you here?”
    “I’ve come about the evictions.”
    “What evictions?”
    “The ones you imposed yesterday.” Distinctly rankled by his inability to recollect, she waved some papers.
    “Oh, those evictions.”
    The economic condition at the estate was tenuous, and the removal of those malingerers who hadn’t paid rent in ages seemed an elemental place to start in regaining financial ground. He’d signed the notices with barely a thought. Besides, it was only a dozen or so crofters. Why was she protesting?
    “What about them?” he testily snarled.
    “How could you?” Her devotion to her cause was so profound that tears welled in her eyes.
    “Well, I . . . I . . .” he stammered again. The woman was turning him into a blathering fool. Frowning over at Ian, he visually pleaded for help, but of course didn’t receive any.
    He couldn’t abide female histrionics, and he wasn’t about to suffer through a bout of weeping.
    Pulling himself up to his full six feet, he peered down at her in his most imperious fashion. “I won’t be interrogated—or vilified—as to any decisions I make regarding the property. And I certainly don’t intend to answer to the likes of you.”
    “Aren’t you the high-and-mighty lord.” She pronounced his title with the same contemptuousness Ian constantly used, infusing it with an ample amount of scorn so that John ended up feeling as though he were committing some horrid crime simply by existing.
    “That is what I am, Miss Fitzgerald. Lord. And master, I might remind you.” He wasn’t about to subject himself to badgering by the termagant. The expulsionresolution had been the first he’d made concerning the property in years—a property to which he’d never wanted to be tied—and he wasn’t about to be challenged over it by the village tyrant.
    “Well, you may be the lord here, but you’re making a brilliant mess of it. And you’ve scarcely arrived. I can only guess what idiotic steps you’ll take if you’re in residence a whole month.”
    How dare she? The little despot.
    “I’ll take your opinion under advisement.” Oozing sarcasm, he motioned toward the door, specifying that her appointment was over, but she didn’t leave.
    How much more explicit could he be?
    “But some of these people have loyally served your family for generations. Why, Mr. Gladstone, himself, toiled in the stables for seventy-nine years. It’s not his fault that his rheumatism has gotten so painful that he can’t continue. And Mrs. Wilson is a widow. With twelve children. Where will they go? What will they do?”
    A widow? With children? A crippled, elderly man? Could he have . . . ?
    No. He wouldn’t wander down that disturbing road.
    “Their problems are not mine,” he loftily declared, sounding arrogant and pretentious even to his own ears.
    “Isn’t that a fine Christian attitude?”
    He abandoned the safety of his desk and stomped toward her, but not too close, lest she was prone to bite. “Miss Fitzgerald, we’re finished.”
    “We are not.”
    “I won’t listen to any further drivel.”
    “Drivel!” she fumed. “Well, I’ve just begun, so you’d better sit down and get comfortable. We’re in for a lengthy discussion.”
    “We’re not discussing this,” he wailed in a near shout.
    Ignoring him, she rummaged through her documents, as though hunting for a list of grievances, and he looked to Ian for guidance, but his brother grinned and shrugged, immensely enjoying the squabble.
    John was totally mystified as to what to do. Though he’d threatened to Rutherford that he’d bodily throw her out, he couldn’t picture himself lifting her up and hauling her off like a sack of potatoes. Nor could he imagine calling for the servants to dislodge her. In light of her state of pique, it might take more than one footman and, despite how irksome she was, he couldn’t bear to watch several burly fellows wrestling with