Love and Larceny Read Online Free PDF

will make us odd numbers at table,” Wynn
pointed out, then cringed inwardly. He sounded like a waspish
dowager!
    “I’m sure it won’t be a problem,” Daphne
said, to both of them it seemed. “Lady Brentfield is a particular
friend of mine, and there are dozens of bedchambers to spare. Ride
back with us, and we’ll ask.”
    He took her hand and bowed over it once more.
“Your servant, Miss Courdebas.” Releasing her, he strode for his
horse, then paused to glance back at them. “Need any help to
remount, Fairfax?”
    Heat flushed Wynn’s face. “No, thank
you.”
    Sheridan nodded, then grinned at Daphne. “I
know better than to ask you, Miss Courdebas.” He put his foot in
the stirrup and vaulted into the saddle.
    Daphne sighed. It wasn’t a huff of annoyance
at the display but an exhalation of appreciation. The heat that had
brushed his face seemed to lodge in his chest.
    “Sure you don’t need a hand up?” he
asked.
    “No, thank you,” she said with a smile.
Taking the reins, she led her horse to a rock jutting out of the
field and stepped up on it to push herself into the side saddle.
With a nod to him, she clucked to the stallion and began ambling
back toward the manor.
    “What a woman,” Sheridan said as Wynn led his
horse to the rock to mount the same way. “I hope my pursuit of her
won’t diminish our friendship, Fairfax.”
    Friendship? They had no friendship. Sheridan
hadn’t even remembered his name correctly. Wynn eyed him. “Not at
all. But don’t expect me to wish you luck, for I intend to capture
Daphne Courdebas’s heart myself.”
    Sheridan gathered up his reins. “It seems we
are rivals then. May the best man win.” With a nod, he turned his
horse and rode after Daphne.
    Wynn followed suit. No doubt Sheridan thought
himself the better man, and Wynn feared Daphne might agree, at
least for the moment. But he was not about to concede the
field.
    Sheridan might be good looking and exude a
certain charm, but he had been a lazy scholar and a cunning
gamester at Eton. Perhaps because he had attended the elite school
on scholarship, he had done all he could to ingratiate himself with
the more affluent students from powerful families. All had agreed
that Sheridan was a great gun, a good fellow. By the way he had
so-subtlety endeared himself to Daphne, it seemed he had not lost
the knack of landing himself in the pudding.
    He certainly poured on the butter sauce when
they reached Brentfield. The rest of the company at the house party
was out on the north lawn, strolling about. The reflecting pool
made the soft white of the ladies’ muslin gowns look like so many
clouds drifting in the summer sky. Sheridan immediately set about
complimenting the ladies as Daphne introduced him to them. Lord
Brentfield called Wynn over to where the earl and Sinclair were
conversing.
    His lordship tipped his chin toward the
newcomer. “A friend of yours, Wynn?”
    Sinclair was frowning, but at the earl’s use
of Wynn’s first name or the stranger in their midst, Wynn couldn’t
know. Daphne had told him about her former art teacher’s husband.
David Tenant had been a leather worker in Boston before learning he
had inherited the titles and estates of Brentfield. Daphne claimed
he had refused to change his character or manner to fit in with
Society’s dictates. Even now, he wore a tweed coat and brown
trousers that might have belonged to a country shepherd rather than
a man of property, and the breeze ruffled his brown hair which was
unconfined by a top hat such as the other men wore. Still, Wynn
couldn’t help liking his frank, open manner and easy way of
speaking.
    “We attended school together,” he told the
earl, glancing to where Sheridan was bowing so deeply to Hannah
that Wynn might have thought the little dark-haired lady was the
heir apparent to the throne. “We did not spend a great deal of time
together.”
    “I’ve heard of him,” Sinclair put in. “Rumor
has it he was offered a place