Miss Truelove Beckons (Classic Regency Romances Book 12) Read Online Free PDF

her own small hands, encased in worn blue gloves a little too big for her, as they were Arabella’s cast-offs.
    Lord Drake was not a man to be taken lightly. Unwillingly, her mind turned to thoughts of Arthur Bottleby, her father’s curate and soon to be vicar of his own parish, the man who had asked for her hand shortly before she had received the invitation from Lady Swinley and Arabella. Mr. Bottleby was not unattractive—in fact many of the village maidens were entranced by his burning dark eyes and intense manner—but in comparison to Lord Drake, this golden nobleman at her side . . . she frowned, castigating herself once again. How could she compare her suitor with Lord Drake, Major-General Lord Drake, one of Wellington’s most trusted leaders? It was not fair to Mr. Bottleby, and another example of how silly she was being. She knew better than to idolize a man based on reputation, and really, Mr. Bottleby was a very good man, very earnest—
    “Do you agree, Miss Becket?”
    She had lost the thread of his lordship’s conversation in contemplation of his lordship’s magnificence! Just like the green schoolgirl she had not been for many years now. She gazed up at him, eyes wide. “I am sorry, my lord, I was not attending. What did you ask?”
    A grin lurking at the corners of his mouth, he said, “Have I lost your attention so very easily?”
    “No,” True said, mortified that he would think so. “No, really, I was just contemplating the beauty of your home,” she said, sweeping a hand out to indicate their lovely garden surroundings. “It is so beautiful.” There; could she have sounded more the widgeon? He would think her the veriest half-wit, and deservedly so.
    “It is. I thought of Lea Park often while I was gone. And when I came back it was like stepping into my own past, only I was so very different.” He paused at the edge of the terrace by a boxwood hedge, and they gazed out over the valley, the hazy distance to the west lit by the descending sun.
    She relaxed again at his taking up of her subject. It was kind of him to ignore her wool-gathering. Mr. Bottleby would have been stiff and angry with her for that lapse in courtesy, for he did not like to be ignored or not attended to. “That is the way with all of life, though,” True said, responding to the viscount’s comment. “When you revisit the haunts of your youth, it is with the golden expectation that everything has remained the same. Sometimes it has, but you yourself are so changed that it seems . . . different. Smaller. Shabbier. It is the same with people that one has not seen in a long, long time.”
    “True. I spent some time in London when I got back, before I came down to Lea Park. I was injured, but still able to get around. I thought I would revisit my old haunts, visit with some of my cronies. We used to have such fun, going to mills, gambling until dawn, visiting the opera houses and—”
    “And the opera dancers,” True chuckled, and then flushed. Oh, her unruly tongue! A young lady was not supposed to know about opera dancers. She would not, but for Arabella’s sometimes scandalous tales of London life. For a girl of twenty-two her cousin had an extensive grounding in the affairs—sometimes quite literally the affairs—of the denizens of that great metropolis.
    But Lord Drake squeezed her arm and chuckled with her. “That, too. Young men will have their amours. But . . .” His expression turned serious.
    True gazed up at him, noting how the golden sun bathed his face in a ruddy glow. He was so very handsome, even with the lines of weariness and worry etched on his gaunt face. Something about him touched her deeply. Perhaps it was the sadness she saw in his golden eyes, or some longing she sensed from his soul, a longing for peace, she thought. “But?” A breeze swept up from the riverside and tugged at her curls. She swept them out of her eyes impatiently.
    His voice, when he spoke again, was remote. He gazed