Love With a Scandalous Lord Read Online Free PDF

became ill. As I mentioned earlier, it’s been a trying few months.”
    “I can’t imagine it has been easy for you, either. The responsibilities involved in the managing of Harrington and Blackhurst are many. Although I have the utmost confidence in your ability to handle them.”
    “Speaking of responsibilities, I would ask that you take your family on an outing each afternoon from two until five. I’ll have a carriage readied for your convenience. Mother will visit with Father during that time. The less often your paths cross, the better.”
    “You didn’t tell her that you’d sent for me.”
    It was a statement, not a question. Rhys shrugged.He’d informed various servants that guests would be arriving because rooms needed to readied and the coach sent for them. “I had planned to inform her this evening. I misjudged how soon you would arrive.”
    “I’m grateful you sent for me.”
    “It was Father’s wish.”
    “But not yours,” Grayson said.
    “I’m pleased to see you’ve done remarkably well for yourself.” He stepped away from the window. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have pressing matters to which I must attend. I will dine with you and your family this evening.”
    He sat at the desk and began arranging papers as though they were of great importance, hoping Grayson would understand without being told that he was being summarily dismissed.
    “He forbade me to take you with me,” Grayson said quietly.
    Rhys lifted his gaze, allowing his resentment to surface. “Remarkably convenient—how you chose to disobey him in all matters save that one.”
    “You are his son.”
    “As are you.”
    “Your place was here.”
    “My place has been in hell.”

Chapter 3
    “I should have taken him with me.”
    With his wife’s arm wound around his, Grayson walked through the elaborate gardens that had calmed him as a child. He found little comfort in the bright blossoms or the perfectly pruned hedges now. How was he ever to have known how much he would miss never-ending fields of cotton?
    Or how much he would come to rely on the inner strength of the woman strolling beside him. Through the years, they’d become adept at judging each other’s moods, reading each other’s thoughts, so that even now she did not prod him to continue but waited patiently for him to unravel his misgivings at his own pace.
    “He begged me. He was only fifteen, pleading for me to allow him to travel to Texas with me. Knowing Father was opposed to the notion, I refused to even consider taking Rhys.”
    “You can’t feel guilty. You were traveling across an ocean and had no idea what might be waiting for you in Texas. As I recall when you were told that Fortune awaited you, you thought they were referring to money, not a town.”
    He chuckled low. “Indeed, I quickly learned more than one kind of fortune existed.”
    His wife represented the best type of fortune that could be bestowed on a man.
    “Unfortunately, Abbie, I can feel guilty about not taking him, and by God, I do. Rhys has changed.”
    “I should hope so. We’ve all changed. It’s been fifteen years,” she reminded him.
    He glanced over at her, this woman who had seen beyond the accident of his birth, the first and only woman to give him unconditional love.
    “I am not referring to the way he looks or the fact he is no longer a callow lad. Rather I fear he may have suffered because of my leaving. I was only a little older than Colton is now when Rhys was born. I should have had little interest in him. Yet as he grew, he seemed as lonely as I. A bond developed between us. Perhaps because we had a common enemy. Quentin. We avoided him at all costs. But there were times when he was not to be avoided. Quentin took his wrath out on me, and with me no longer here, I believe he may have turned his ugly temperament on Rhys.”
    “That’s not your fault.”
    He shook his head, unable to explain fully the horrors that had surrounded him here. The heir apparent