Lady Windermere's Lover Read Online Free PDF Page B

you.”
    “Her Ladyship is here?” The woman was supposed to have stayed in the country and waited for him to return. Looking past Ellis, he noticed changes in the hall. The paint had been freshened, which was an improvement; a large Chinese urn occupied one corner, which was not. Ugly as it was, it paled in comparison to a ghastly Dutch still-life painting featuring a variety of dead birds.
    “Has Lady Windermere spent much time in London during my absence?”
    “She has been in residence most of the year.”
    With trepidation he remembered that he’d given her carte blanche to refurbish Beaulieu Manor. If this was an example of her taste, he shuddered to think what she might have done to his mother’s house.
    “Where is she?”
    “When she came in, she retired to the small parlor. She said she wished to read in peace and would ring when she was ready to go upstairs. She asked not to be disturbed.”
    “I don’t suppose she meant me.”
    “Certainly not, my lord. Her Ladyship will be very happy to see you at last.” A subtle reprimand colored the butler’s final words. “Do you need anything? I see that your luggage has been delayed.”
    “Nothing for now, Ellis. That will be all.” He didn’t need a witness to a reunion whose course he could no longer predict. He’d anticipated his bride grateful for his arrival in the wilds of Oxfordshire. By moving to London without permission, she demonstrated an unpleasing independence. He passed out of the hall, behind the double staircase to the short passage leading to the rear ground floor rooms.
    The small parlor was empty. He tried the library next door and found it dark and unheated. He returned to the parlor, where the fire glowed, though it looked as though no one had tended it for an hour or two. A leather-bound novel lay open on a table next to the chaise longue. The curtains over the French windows were open a crack and the door into the garden was unlocked. Apparently, like him, his wife, had felt the need for fresh air. Detecting no light outside, he stepped out.
    “My lady?” No response. The garden was of a fair size for London, but it didn’t take long to see that it was empty, unless she was crouching behind the shrubbery. His boots were almost silent on the frosted lawn and he could hear nothing but the occasional rumble of wheels in the street beyond. Back inside he looked out one last time and saw a bobbing light coming from the left side. Acting on instinct, he slipped hastily into the dark library. A pair of shadowy figures, one a woman, appeared against the garden wall. They spoke for a short time, then exchanged a tender embrace. The man faded back into the wall and the woman headed for the house. As she hurried up the path, the lantern illuminated his wife’s long-forgotten features. She was prettier than he remembered, and her hairstyle had improved, her blond hair now dressed in a fashionable tangle of curls. Her blue evening gown was modish and in excellent taste. Something about her appearance nagged a memory, and not a distant one. As she neared the house she tossed a look over her shoulder. The other man had disappeared.
    Though he hadn’t spent much time in the garden in recent years, he remembered an iron gate in the wall, leading to the adjacent garden of . . . Denford House.
    Idiot that he was to have forgotten. Julian and he used to joke about their family mansions being next door to each other. But Julian had never set foot in his. From a distant and despised branch of the Fortescue family, he hadn’t been welcome at the family headquarters. Now he must own the place.
    And Damian’s wife had been visiting him. After midnight. It had been she at the theater, of course, sitting brazenly in a box with her lover. He wondered if she had recognized him there. She expected him in London.
    Rejecting his first urge to confront her, he collapsed into a chair, listened, and thought.
    It was all Julian’s doing, of course. His wife