Prelude for a Lord Read Online Free PDF

obvious,” Raven said.
    “Pity you can’t forbid him to dance with her,” Ian said. “Although, Bay, if you allow him to guide her outside a ballroom for a moonlit stroll in the garden, I should have to shoot you myself.”
    “If Bay did that, I would suspect someone had slipped some tonic into his tea to make him stupid,” Raven said.
    “I had forgotten how jovial and complimentary your company was,” Bayard replied.
    Before they reentered the drawing room, however, Ian said in a low voice, “Be very careful, not only of your sister, but of your reputation as well. He is the sort of man to exploit any weakness he can ferret out.”
    “I shall be careful.” Bayard could make no mistakes for the next year. His sister’s season, and his mother’s sensitive heart, depended upon him.

CHAPTER TWO

    A lethea’s half sister, Lucy Purcell, stumbled as she stepped outside St. Mary’s chapel after church on Sunday morning. “Surely you’re jesting.”
    “I have had five exhausting days of attending to my aunt as she spoke to her solicitor and preventing Margaret from sliding down the bannister and terrorizing the shopkeepers as we acquired fabric for some new clothes for her. I assure you, I am not jesting.” Alethea breathed in the cool air after the musty atmosphere of the chapel. She appreciated that the church in the square was small and not as crowded as other more public churches, but the sermons and prayers wove around her ribcage like a corset pulled too tightly. None of those lofty rectors preaching obedience had been abandoned by God to a neglectful father and cruel brother. She had no use for a God like that.
    “You, caring for a child?” Lucy peeked around the edge of her bonnet to study Alethea. “You, who have always been unfashionably direct with gentlemen where other women were demure, becauseyou have no interest in marrying? If you did not look so unwell I should find this quite diverting.”
    Alethea glared. Lucy laughed.
    Alethea looked for Aunt Ebena, who as usual had not sat with Alethea and her sister during the service. Her aunt’s lined face made her seem to be forever frowning whenever directed at Alethea or Lucy, which made Alethea relieved she didn’t impose her company upon them, but she felt the pain of the slight for Lucy’s sake.
    Aunt Ebena was speaking to one of her numerous friends, and would likely remain with them until Lucy left Alethea’s company to return to her employer.
    “I take it Margaret is staying?” Lucy asked. As the day was fine, they made their way toward the formal gardens laid out in the centre of the square.
    “Aunt Ebena’s solicitor found nothing in Margaret’s father’s will to allow her to refuse this responsibility.” At least Aunt Ebena had kept her disappointment to herself and Alethea, and had not expressed her reluctance to Margaret directly.
    “But Margaret is niece to Aunt Ebena’s late husband. She is no relation of yours.”
    “She’s a closer relation to that Aunt Nancy woman, who was third cousin to Margaret’s mother.” Alethea ran her hand through a shrub of rosemary along the path, breathing in the pungent scent. “However, I gather that Margaret’s . . . liveliness had been trying.”
    Lucy crowed, “What did Miss Jenkins say to you before she quit her post? That she hoped you would one day have a child exactly like—”
    “Miss Jenkins was the worst governess of the lot,” Alethea protested. “She wanted me to curl my hair. Every morning.”
    “The curling iron did work for two entire minutes before it all straightened again.”

    “Miss Jenkins’s curse has not come to pass,” Alethea said. “I have quite enjoyed having Margaret about.”
    “Have you now?” Lucy regarded her sister with narrowed eyes. “And what of her education?”
    The elms rattled in the wind like a thousand fingers shaking at her. “Education?”
    “Is she adequately prepared to be enrolled in a ladies’ seminary?”
    “Er . . .