Lady Anne's Lover (The London List) Read Online Free PDF

explanation, but none was forthcoming. Gareth was himself not a churchgoer. He believed in the power of something or he would not be sitting here nursing his tea, but was sure God could not be found in the four walls of the miserly cold building his parents had dragged him off to in his youth.
    “Then we’re both non-Nonconformists,” he joked. “Commune with nature Sundays if it suits you.”
    “If it stops raining,” Mrs. Mont said rather wistfully.
    “It always rains in Wales. When it’s not snowing. Did you grow up in London, Mrs. Mont?”
    She shook her head. A flush of color spread across her cheeks. Surely that question wasn’t too personal.
    “We’re rather far away. Won’t you miss your family?”
    The blush deepened. “No, I will not. I have no family.”
    “Then we have that in common, too. I’m the last of the Riptons and almost the last of my branch of the Joneses. All my relatives are buried in the churchyard, but I don’t think I’ll be joining them.”
    Her lips twitched. “Planning on eternal life, Major?”
    “Nay. I’ll die when my time comes, but not here. I suppose I should tell you the bad news. I’ve lured you up here on false pretenses.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “There are mortgages held against Ripton Hall. They come due soon, and I have no way of paying them. My father’s doing, not mine. For all his chapel attendance, he gambled and he lost with alarming frequency. My mother was not around to stop him—she died some years ago. My schemes to save the Hall came to naught when I lost my arm last year. So I’ll have to settle the debts somehow. Sell the place before the bank forecloses and still have some coin in my pocket, if I’m lucky.”
    Her eyes widened in surprise. “You lost your arm only last year?”
    “Oh, you thought it was a consequence of war, didn’t you? And I did not correct you earlier. I’m sorry. Oddly enough, I escaped mostly unscathed after a fifteen-year career in the army.” He’d joined the Royal Welch Fusiliers as a lad of seventeen, full of anger and bravado. There had been plenty of opportunities to lose an arm and even his mind over the years—he had been in the thick of battles in Albuera, Badajoz, Salamanca, the Pyrenees, Nivelle, Toulouse, and Waterloo. His regiment had been the last to leave Spain, thorough to the end.
    “How did it happen then?”
    “I fell from a tenant’s roof last Christmas and broke my arm. Shattered it, really. It could not be set.” He shrugged. It had been agony; now it was over and simply inconvenient. For a one-armed man he managed. One only needed one hand to pick up a pint or stroke one’s cock.
    His left leg had been broken, too, but that had healed cleanly, with nary a limp to show for the months he’d spent in bed. Some people would consider him to be a lucky man.
    After the accident, Bronwen wouldn’t have him with his deformity. Just as well they had waited to marry after observing a decent period of mourning for her late husband. How wretched it would be to wake up to a wife’s disgust every single day as well as his own.
    Bronwen had not loved him. That discovery was worse than losing his arm.
    “How awful.” Mrs. Mont was pale now, each golden freckle visible.
    “So now you know my secrets. What are yours?”
    She stood up abruptly. “I have none, Major. None. Thank you for your honesty about the length of my employment. I’ll have to see about making other arrangements immediately.”
    Gareth felt a flare of alarm. His tongue had been too loose. “You won’t leave me yet? The house needs to be presentable for a sale. And who knows—I might find an heiress to marry before the notes come due. Who would not want me, an impoverished cripple?”
    It was his own fault he’d not been wed long ago, when his reputation was still burnished. But he’d wanted Bronwen. Unobtainable, married Bronwen. And now she was lost to him forever.
    “I—I’ll have to think on it. Ev—Mr. Ramsey will