Led Astray by a Rake Read Online Free PDF Page A

to let it slip through her grasp. And Abbot was with her, up to a point. Sometimes he was far too cautious and proper for Estelle’s liking, such as when he refused to contemplate any of Estelle’s clever plans to get His Lordship and Miss together.
    That was when she decided she’d have to play her own game,her own way, and if a little dishonesty and trickery were necessary, then so be it. Abbot didn’t have to know. What did it matter about scruples when she was fighting for her happiness?

Chapter 3
    N ic wasn’t pleased. He was irritated and annoyed, mostly with himself. He’d sworn he wouldn’t respond to the note sent to him by Olivia Monteith yesterday evening, that he would find something far more important to do, or go for a ride, or browse his father’s collection of books in the library. Why should he meet her? They might be neighbors, but it wasn’t as if he had an obligation to her.
    But try as he might, he hadn’t been able to put her from his mind. The questions kept coming, crowding his thoughts, agitating him so much he couldn’t concentrate on anything else.
    What did she mean by “urgent”? How could a meeting by the stream possibly be urgent? And why had she chosen him as the ultimate prize in her mad quest for a husband? Surely there were plenty of other men out there, men who would be far more eager to succumb to her charms?
    Meeting with her would be a big mistake.
    And yet, now, here he was, striding furiously through the woods toward the stream thatmarked the boundary between his land and the village, his glower dark enough to frighten the birds down from the trees.
    His foul mood wasn’t helped by the fact that he had run into his mother in the walled garden that morning. Not literally, of course, but they had both turned a corner at the same time and found themselves face-to-face.
    His first thought, after the shock of seeing her, was that she looked old and tired. Although they lived on the same estate, she in the gatehouse and he in the castle itself, they did not see or speak to each other. His mother had not spoken to him directly since 1828. She preferred to communicate through the servants and the occasional terse note.
    And suddenly there they were, inches apart.
    But if he’d expected that morning to be the start of a new era of understanding, he soon realized his mistake. Her dark eyes widened, her mouth tightened, and she spun around and began to walk away with an angry rustle of her black skirts. Black, of course black. She’d been in mourning ever since his father died. He’d been told by Abbot that she still had a place set at her table for him, in case his spirit might decide to join her for dinner.
    The idea made him queasy. Imagine sharing a table with his father’s ghost. No, thank you. But it seemed a waste for her to be so obsessed with a dead man, when her son was still living. Was it any wonder Nic spent more time away from the castle than in it?
    He strode on through the woods, feeling upset and irritable, and knowing the last thing he wanted to do was listen to Miss Monteith’s fantastical imaginings of married bless. Nic slipped his fob watch from his pocket and flipped open the cover. Two o’clock, exactly. He could only hope she wouldn’t turn up.
    It was the last coherent thought Nic had as he stepped from the leafy trees and onto the grassy bank of the stream.
    Olivia Monteith had kept their assignation, but she wasn’t standing, waiting, demurely on the bank. She was balanced preciously on the stepping stones out in the middle of the deep, fast-flowing steam. The very same stones she’d been standing on all those years ago.
    Nic heard himself shout. Even as his memory reminded him that this was what had happened last time, he couldn’t seem to stop himself.
    “For God’s sake, get down from there!”
    She looked up.
    She was wearing a pale lemon dress, the hem lifted so that he could see her slippers as she balanced on the slippery stones, and