My Lady, My Lord Read Online Free PDF Page B

to win at cards, just like his father.
    The clench turned to burning.
    He’d done well for himself, of course. He enjoyed good friends, the ample proceeds of a smoothly running estate and a superb breeding stable, and the company of the most beautiful unmarried women in England. And he had never cheated at the tables. Not once. He worked hard to make certain he would never be tempted to do so.
    “Care for a bite to eat?” the marquess asked, patting his rotund stomach. Ian nodded, casting his eye about for Jag and unreasonably glad he didn’t find the baron amongst the club’s patrons tonight. Jag was far too sharp, and Ian was in no humor for deflecting more questions.
    They settled at a table and Stoopie ordered beefsteak and onions. Ian took the same, and a bottle of brandy. Those consumed, he ordered whiskey. Its pungent aroma curled into his nostrils like twin pincers, and the recollection of Corinna Mowbray’s furious face faded slowly from his mind’s eye.
    After that, he was too far aloft to recall much of anything.
    ~o0o~
    Ian awoke in unusual discomfort. The bedclothes twisted about his legs and arms, immobilizing him. He tried to stretch but cloth cinched up beneath his armpits. After the club he must have returned home more disguised than he’d realized. He preferred to wear nothing to bed, but his valet, Andrews, liked him to wear a nightshirt—damn his meddling. The wretched thing seemed heavier than usual, though.
    He lifted a hand to rub his face awake.
    Ruffles?
Since when had he purchased a nightshirt with ruffled sleeves? Or satin ribbon wound about the cuff? Since when had he allowed any garment even vaguely resembling this into his house? Andrews had gone too far this time.
    His palm smoothed across his cheek, and arrested. Andrews couldn’t have possibly shaved him when he’d come home near four o’clock, could he? His manservant needed a stern dressing down just as soon as he brought his miraculous morning-after tonic: one part coffee, one part blue ruin, and one part secret ingredient. Andrews refused to tell him the mix, probably because he knew it was the sole reason Ian put up with his mother hen routine year after year.
    The door opened. Ian slewed his sleep-fogged eyes toward it. A maid entered bearing a silver tray with a teapot and a sprig of flowers in a small vase. The tray was wrong; Ian took breakfast in his dining room, no matter what hour he rose, and he never drank tea before the evening. But the maid, apparently a new girl, was a pretty thing, so he didn’t chastise her.
    In his younger years he’d dallied a bit with willing servants, but categorically never his own. He appreciated a fine set of cat heads as well as the next fellow, though. The maid’s jutted out over the tray like a pair of money bags ready for Midas to fondle. Her attention was fixed on the contents of the tray, so Ian looked his fill. He generally liked slightly smaller breasts, but it was still early in the day yet, and the maid’s attributes weren’t to be dismissed out of hand.
    A niggling sense that something was not quite right pricked at the back of his neck. Something missing.
    “Good morning, milady. Chocolate, toast, and the post.” The maid smiled, set the tray upon a stand on the empty side of his bed, and departed.
    Ian barely heard the door close.
    This was not his bed.
    He always slept in his bed.
Always
. He took his pleasures with beautiful partners wherever he wished, but never in his own bedchamber. It was the one place, the single spot that he could return to each night—or morning, as more often the case—and be at complete peace. He didn’t even allow his friends into his private chambers.
    He’d spoken the truth to that blasted prim bluestocking Corinna Mowbray the day before. He slept well every night of his adult life because he kept his own bed sacrosanct, unmarked by the scent of a woman’s perfume, strands of long hair left behind, the impression of a head in the