Gareth: Lord of Rakes Read Online Free PDF Page B

squall blew up. The boat capsized, and most perished with it. My younger brother Andrew managed to rescue my mother, who at some point in her girlhood learned the rudiments of swimming.”
    Gareth could manage this recitation in bland tones now, the signal accomplishment of nine years of effort.
    “That’s tragic!” she expostulated. “What a great blessing you did not drown as well, my lord. Surely you do not regard that as ill fortune?” Her great golden eyes shone at him with a world of concern, and she’d leaned forward to touch his sleeve.
    He took her hand and absently raised it to his lips. The scent of lavender was stronger near her wrist, more bracing. He wished she’d been sitting beside him, so he might maintain possession of that scent.
    “I don’t regret surviving”—he didn’t regret surviving now—“but suspicion turned on me, because I’d had no stated reason for declining to join my relations on that boat. Some suspected I was guilty of foul play, and that rumor colored my first impressions of Polite Society, and—to be honest—theirs of me.” Foul play, a euphemism for fratricide, patricide, and several other forms of craven murder.
    “But surely your mother and brother would have exonerated you?”
    Her outrage was both comforting and disconcerting. She assumed he was blameless and thought others should have as well, affirming his sense that Felicity Worthington was not simply proper, she was also, in the most sincere sense, decent.
    “My mother eventually recovered, though at the time she developed a serious inflammation of the lungs. By the time she healed from that, and from her grief, the worst of the gossip had died down. Andrew was fifteen, and I did not feel it fair to burden him with my problems in addition to his own difficulties.”
    The compassion in her amber gaze could have melted any heart. This warmth in her was unexpected and not particularly welcome. Gareth’s first impression of her had been one of starch and sensibility, and for her to turn up… sweet was not in his plans.
    “Your brother blamed himself for not being able to rescue more of them,” she said, drawing the conclusion on her own.
    “He did, honorable little whelp that he was—at the time. I’m afraid since the accident, he’s grown into a bit of a rascal.” Though would Gareth have been grateful to Andrew if Julia had been rescued, or resentful? Probably both.
    “And what of you, my lord? Are you a bit of a rascal?”
    “The terms applied to me are not quite so charming, Miss Worthington, as you are no doubt aware.”
    She sat back, finely arched brows knit. “I’m not aware, your lordship. I was not out when details of your family tragedy would have been common knowledge. Because my mother died before my come-out, I never really moved much in Society, even when I was old enough to do so. My father made a few attempts to introduce me around, but they never came to anything. I did not take, you see.”
    She smiled as she announced this. Smiled the same shy, proud smile another woman would have evidenced when referring to making a bow before the Queen.
    “I don’t believe that bothered you much.”
    “It did not. I wondered if blond hair and petite stature might have served me better, but I did not wish for it. I had been running my father’s household for some time before I came of age. I was happier to do something that made a difference to the family’s well-being than to be out until dawn, fluttering my eyelashes at callow swains.”
    He laughed again, a short explosion of sardonic mirth. “God help the swains if you’d determined they were useful for something more to your liking.”
    “Oh, I like to dance, and I love music. But I am too tall for most young men to partner well, and they have not the patience for truly enjoying the music.”
    She was right, of course. The average exponent of well-bred English young manhood was at best politely decorative in Gareth’s opinion—also