Margaret Moore Read Online Free PDF

Philip snorted most inelegantly. “Gad, man, is that all? I thought you were going to ask for half!”
    “Then obviously you will have no trouble providing the sovereign. My clerk will be happy to take it.”
    Sir Philip reached into his jacket and pulled out a rather tattered purse. He fished around for a moment, then tossed a gold coin on the desk. “There you are, my man.”
    “I said you may give to my clerk,” Rob reiterated, making no move to touch it.
    With a sour frown, the nobleman’s hand darted out and he took it back again. He rubbed it between his fingers.
    “Perhaps we should celebrate your good fortune with a drink?” he proposed, his gaze surreptitiously scanning the room, no doubt for a bottle or decanter.
    The need for a drink might also explain his nervous twisting and turning of the coin.
    “I think not.”
    Sir Philip reared back in astonishment. “Gad, are you a Puritan?”
    “No. However, I keep no wine or spirits in my office, and I have no time to visit a tavern today.” Rob gestured at the document still on his desk.
    “Oh, I see,” Sir Philip grudgingly replied. “I have a meeting with my bride’s uncle, Elias Burroughs, tomorrow afternoon. Sup with me at noon and we can discuss the terms to offer. We’ll go to see him afterward.”
    “Very well,” Rob agreed, rising.
    Sir Philip likewise got up. “I live in the Strand, Martlebury House.” He chuckled his nasty chuckle. “I can hardly wait to see Burroughs’s fat face when he finds out I have Heartless Harding in my purse.”
    Holding his hands stiff at his side, his fingers slowly curving into fists, Rob made a small bow and watched as the nobleman sauntered out the door as if he owned all of London and a good portion of England besides.
    “Bloody jackanapes,” Rob muttered under his breath as he returned to his desk and once again silently vowed to forget a beautiful young woman with lively blue eyes and passion in her kiss who refused to marry to a man she did not love.

Chapter 4
    “S o there I was, my dear, absolutely bankrupt and not a farthing to my name and Edmond glaring at me in the worst way,” Lettice Jerningham said as she put another French bonbon in her bow-shaped mouth and giggled. “’But Edmond,’ I said, ‘I thought I was going to win!’ I mean, really, Vivienne, what else did he think I was betting for?”
    Vivienne nodded absently as she sat beside Lettice in the Jerninghams’ drawing room and watched Lettice consume a plateful of sugar-covered confections.
    Lettice Jerningham was the daughter of one of Uncle Elias’s business associates. She had married a minor courtier, of nearly the same age as Uncle Elias, and been presented at court last year. She rarely mentioned her much older husband, preferring to talk about the court and especially the king.
    She also apparently found some compensation in eating bonbons while petting her spaniel, Lord Bobbles, whom she had purchased in imitation of King Charles, who was known to adore his dogs.
    Normally, Vivienne avoided Lettice as much as she could. Unfortunately, she had not been able to find out much at all about Philip in the past week, and so had come to Lettice as a last resort. Even more unfortunately, although she had come to visit Lettice for the sole purpose of asking about Sir Philip, the very notion of giving the loquacious Lettice even a hint of Sir Philip’s intentions was so distasteful, she hadn’t yet been able to mention him.
    Nevertheless, the mysterious solicitor had been right—she had been going about dissuading her uncle from making the match the wrong way. She had been trying to force him to see things her way, something that was utterly impossible. Instead, she must discover things about Philip her uncle would find objectionable. Ever since she had returned home on the night she’d tried to run away and climbed back into her room, she had thought of little but the solicitor and his advice. He even haunted her dreams.
    In