Lady Allerton's Wager Read Online Free PDF

her bread roll. ‘You are altogether too quick with your opinions! We shall never find a husband for you! As well try to find a wife for your brother! Why, Lady Hutton was saying only the other day that her Maria would be the perfect bride for Trevithick were it not that Hutton would worry to give her into the care of someone with so sadly unsteady a character! So there is no prospect of that fifty thousand pounds coming into the family!’
    Marcus sighed. It was difficult enough having a parent who was so frank in her criticism without her holding the view that he was still in short coats. How Eleanor tolerated it, he could not imagine. He knew that if he had been in her shoes he would have taken the first man who offered, just to escape LadyTrevithick. Marcus was also aware that his friendship with Justin did not help either. The Dowager Viscountess had never got over her disapproval of her nephew and barely acknowledged him in public, a sign of displeasure that Justin cheerfully ignored. Families, Marcus thought, could be damnably difficult.
    As if in response to that very thought, Penn, the butler, strode into the room.
    ‘Mr Justin Trevithick is without, my lord, and enquiring for you. Shall I show him in?’
    Marcus grinned. ‘By all means, Penn! And pray send someone to set another cover—my cousin may not yet have partaken of breakfast!’
    The Dowager grunted and hauled her massive bulk from the chair. ‘I have some letters to write and will be in the library. There is the possibility that Dexter’s daughter may be a suitable wife for you, Marcus, but I have some further enquiries to make!’
    ‘Well, pray do not hurry on my account, Mama!’ Marcus said cheerfully, gaining himself another glare from his parent and a covert smile from his sister. ‘Miss Dexter would need to be very rich indeed to tempt me!’
    ‘Marcus, you make her much worse!’ Eleanor whispered, as the Dowager Viscountess left the room. ‘If you could only ignore her!’
    ‘That would be difficult!’ Marcus said drily. ‘I curse the day she appointed herself my matchmaker!’ His expression softened as it rested on his sister. ‘How you tolerate it, infant, I shall never know!’
    Eleanor shook her head but did not speak and, a second later, Justin Trevithick came into the room. He shook Marcus’s hand and gave Eleanor a kiss.
    ‘Eleanor! I’m glad that Lady Trevithick did not whisk you away—’
    The door opened. ‘Her ladyship requests that you join her in the library, Miss Eleanor,’ Penn said, in sonorous tones. ‘Lord Prideaux has called and is with her.’
    Eleanor gave her cousin and brother a speaking glance, then dutifully followed Penn out of the room. Marcus gestured towards the coffee pot. ‘Can I offer you breakfast, Justin? And my apologies for my mother’s transparently bad manners at the same time?’
    Justin laughed. ‘Thank you. I will take breakfast—and for the rest, please do not regard it! The only thing that concerns me is that Lady Trevithick considers Prideaux more suitable company for Eleanor than myself! He is a loose fish, but then, I suppose his parents were at least respectably married!’
    ‘So were yours,’ Marcus commented.
    ‘Yes, but only after I was born!’ Justin leant over and poured some coffee. ‘How do you feel this morning, old fellow? Must confess my head’s splitting! That brandy was nowhere near the quality it pretended!’
    ‘The coffee will help,’ Marcus said absently, reflecting that the brandy had proved to be the opposite of his mysterious adversary of the previous night. She had been Quality masquerading as something else and today he was determined to get to the bottom of that particular mystery. He had told Justin an expurgated version of the whole tale the previous night over the maligned brandy bottle, and his cousin had been as curious as he as to the lady’s motives. Justin had been closer to the fifth Earl than Marcus because theirgrandfather had taken