Everything I Ever Wanted Read Online Free PDF Page A

colonel had been carried there some hours earlier by two servants and cared for by his valet. Now he sat in a wheeled chair beside the hearth. A lamp burned on a table beside him and cast his thin face into harsh relief. A plaid rug covered his legs. His lap held an open book and he was running a single finger down one page as South entered. Neither man spoke until the colonel had finished reading and marked his place.
    "You'll want a drink, I expect," John Blackwood said, setting the book aside. He looked South over in much the same way he read: quickly, thoroughly, with an eye to what was on the surface and what was between the lines. "In the sideboard as always. Scotch for me. There is a story that explains the swollen cheek and lip, I collect."
    Matthew Forrester felt the stirrings of an old memory, one that did not often come to him. This evening's play had something to do with it, he was sure. There had been the odd moment when he had been reminded of Hambrick Hall days. Something the characters did or said pulled him back to that time; the farce of the courtroom scene was an obvious reminder. He hadn't been alone in those memories, because it was at the root of all the outrageous laughter and ill manners on display this evening in Eastlyn's box. None of them had been as foxed as they wanted to be, so there was no blaming it on drink and a thick head.
    But if he had been thinking about the Society of Bishops and their silly tribunal earlier, he thought now about the first time he had seen John Blackwood. There had been that glimpse in his father's study of the pose struck just so, the one that he had adopted to such good effect for the Bishops. Insolent. Mildly challenging. Daring.
    It was a posture Colonel Blackwood could no longer affect. His wasting illness had weakened the muscles of his legs, made his balance uncertain, and slowed his reflexes. This evening his hands were steady. That was not always the case. He was still a handsome man with his shock of black hair. True, it was thinning slightly at the crown and seeded with gray, but it was not what one noticed about the colonel at first glance. It was the eyes that captured attention at the outset and made one stand one's ground, not out of any sense of bravery, but because it seemed quite impossible to move until permission was granted.
    From behind a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles those dark-brown eyes watched South now. Insolent. Mildly challenging. Daring South to express even a hint of pity for him. Time and illness could not change that. It made the viscount smile to realize how wrong he had been.
    "Scotch, eh?" South said."What does your doctor say?"
    "He doesn't advise me in regard to my libations, and I don't call him a charlatan. We find that to be a satisfactory arrangement."
    South chuckled, then winced. He touched his fingers to his lip, wondering if the small cut would scar. He opened the sideboard, withdrew a decanter of Scotch, and poured two tumblers, not stinting for either of them. Returning to where the colonel sat, he handed him one of the tumblers, took a moment to stoke the fire, then eased his long, athletic frame into the wing chair opposite him.
    "I went to Drury Lane this evening," he said.
    "Alone?"
    "No. North needed a diversion. The dowager countess is showing her daughter-in-law off again."
    The deep creases around Blackwood's mouth eased a bit. His smile was gentle."Elizabeth." He said her name fondly. She was a blood relation, the daughter of his dear first cousin, long gone. "She deserves to be shown off, not relegated to the country or playing handmaiden and companion to Lord and Lady Battenburn. Is she well?"
    "Better than well." South chose to remain quiet about the Baron and Baroness of Battenburn. Let Northam extricate his wife from their influence. There were some things a husband should be required to manage on his own.
    Blackwood nodded and returned to their business. "So you and Northam went."
    "Eastlyn also. It's his