Lord Gray's List Read Online Free PDF Page B

not enough to sufficiently bribe some poor soul into losing his heart to that vixen.
    “All right, all right. You can have the paper. I don’t care anything about it.”
    “Truly?”
    “Aye, I said it, didn’t I? Let’s shake on it before I forget I did. You say you’ll get me the money today?”
    Ben breathed an inward sigh of relief as he took the old gentleman’s hand. “You have my word.”
    It would be a scramble, and his banker wouldn’t like it, but Baron Benton Gray was not a man to be argued with. In haste, Ben opened up the small leather-bound notebook he always carried and sketched out the terms of their agreement with a pen he found on the dresser. He signed it with a bold flourish, then tore the page from the book. “If you will sign it yourself, now, I’ll get to the City this afternoon to make the arrangements.”
    “Get me my spectacles, boy.”
    Ben’s honor made him oblige, and he sat for a few uncomfortable minutes while Robert seemed to be committing his words to memory. A white eyebrow raised. “We’re to leave London?”
    “I think it for the best.”
    “Evie won’t like that either. I think, on the whole, I’d better cross that part out and you can initial it.”
    Ben bit his tongue. What difference did it make where Evie was, as long as she wasn’t sneaking around after him at night and writing about him in the morning? Her platform would be closed, locked up, the balky printing press sold or destroyed. Ben would rent the space to some other business and that would be that.
    Before he left, he shook Robert’s palsied hand again, nearly wanting to spin the old gambler around and kiss him. Ben’s life was about to get back to normal at last.

C HAPTER 4
    “Y ou bloody bastard!”
    Ben ducked from the whoosh of what he thought was a walking stick, though it was too dark to see. The youth who wielded it as a weapon was no youth, however, but Evangeline Ramsey, rigged out in evening clothes. Her top hat flew off with the force of her sweep and rolled into the gutter in front of his townhouse.
    “Good evening, Evie,” he said genially. “Come to thank me?”
    “You arrogant son of a bitch! How dare you go to my father? He—he’s not in full possession of his faculties!”
    “He seemed quite well to me this afternoon. He reminded me a bit of my great-uncle Mackenzie. As Uncle Hal aged, he became forgetful at times, but other days he was as sharp as a tack. Even Mrs. Spencer said this was one of your father’s good days.”
    In the flickering gaslight, Evie’s face was as white as the silk scarf she wore wrapped around her throat. “I don’t care what she said! You had no right to go to the house today. I told you I would discuss the sale of the paper with him.”
    “But you didn’t.”
    “I would have! I didn’t have the opportunity.”
    “Shush. You’ll wake the household. Why don’t you come in with me and we can discuss this like . . . gentlemen.”
    Evie expelled a breath, her huff a white cloud in the frigid air. How long had she been lurking in front of his house? The woman was mad—this might be Mayfair, but footpads were known to strike with impunity throughout London. And the air was damp with moisture. Judging from the ring around the moon, it might even snow before dawn.
    “You must be freezing.”
    Her tone certainly was, icicles dripping from each syllable. “I am perfectly fine.”
    Ben doubted it. She didn’t have an ounce of fat on her—she probably didn’t even have to bind her breasts for this ridiculous masculine masquerade. She was not wearing a greatcoat, and impulsively he slipped out of his and tossed it across the pavement to her.
    “Here. Put this on before you sicken yourself and have no one to care for your father.”
    “You—you— bastard .”
    “Now you’re repeating yourself. I thought you had a famous way with words, Evie. Even I have to admit that ‘The Jane Street Jackanapes’ does have a certain ring to it.”
    “As if