Let Love Find You Read Online Free PDF Page A

because he didn’t mince words and never would, no matter what company he was in. He might have been schooled in how to be a gentleman, but he’d found those lessons to be useless, either absurdly amusing—or hypocritical.
    William had been trying to get him to come to parties like this one for years, but Devin had only recently seen a benefit to doing so. Not that he hadn’t begun socializing this year when he found the time. But the invitations he’d received from his clients had been to lesser affairs, which he considered business, nothing as fancy as this one, where every guest bore a title of some sort. Yet now he was receiving invitations from titled nobles he’d never even met, all because he’d helped a few of his clients with matters that had nothing to do with the horses he bred.
    He’d ignored the fancy invites so far—until tonight. He didn’t exactly like these rich London nabobs—unless they were his clients. But even then, he found them to be a silly, frivolous bunch mostly concerned with trifles and entertainments rather than real life. They reminded him too much of the father hehated. They reminded him of the mother who had turned her back on her family so she could enjoy the sins of London. He was more used to country gentry anyway, lords who actually ran their own estates instead of turning them over to factors, men he could respect because they weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty.
    “Fascinating, isn’t she?” William remarked.
    Devin shifted his gaze to the ballroom’s ornately carved fireplace before he said, “Which one?”
    William laughed at him. “Well, our hostess is married and, by all accounts, blissfully so. But you know I was talking about Little Miss Sunshine.”
    “I’m trying not to notice her.”
    “Why?”
    “You’re the one looking for a rich wife, not I,” Devin replied. And that little chatterbox his eyes kept returning to was too pretty by half. The last thing he needed was to get tempted by a woman he could never have.
    “Good of you to bow out on this one for my sake, old chap, but I’m not a complete blockhead,” William said. “Don’t stand a chance with a prime chit like that.”
    “Nonsense—”
    William cut Devin off with a chuckle. “Very well, I’ll own up to it, I gave it my best shot last Season. Didn’t know yet that her father’s a duke. Didn’t care after I found out. But she couldn’t even remember my name! Deuced hard on the ego, that, so I gave up. But you, big, handsome, they don’t even care that you’re a little rough around the edges.”
    That produced the laugh William had intended to elicit from his friend, even if it was quite true. “I may have revitalized the home farm, but I don’t actually consider that my income.And the title that used to be in my family trotted off centuries ago through a daughter instead of being passed down to distant cousins. You do realize Little Miss Sunshine’s family would require at least one of those attributes, if not both?”
    “You’d think so,” William said thoughtfully. “Yes, yes, you do think so, but some families are so rich and lofty, normal expectations simply don’t apply.”
    “Or they’re even more important.”
    William shrugged. “Who knows? But I’ll shut up—mind you, only because you insist you’re not interested in a wife yet. Just think you should keep an open mind in case one happens to fall into your lap—”
    “Thought you were shutting up?”
    William grinned, but then his eyes suddenly flared and he said, “Uh-oh, brace yourself, your competition is bearing down on you.”
    “My what?”
    Devin turned to see the two old ladies approaching him. The one in the lead was plump and gray-haired and looked angry enough to spit. The other was shapely, still had blond hair mixed with her gray, and looked embarrassed as she tagged along behind the stouter dame.
    “Young man, I’ve a bone to pick with you!” the old dame in the lead snapped at