Sapphires Are an Earl's Best Friend Read Online Free PDF Page A

her, he didn’t want her.
    Much.
    “Think about what I said,” he said, releasing her. “Stay away from my father, or I will make your life very, very inconvenient.”
    “No!” She inhaled a sharp breath and put a hand over her heart in mock distress. “Not inconvenient .”
    He scowled at her, and she moved closer to him, poking his chest with a gloved finger. “Think about this, Lord Darlington. If you continue to threaten and harass me, I will make your life inconvenient . You know I can.” She opened the parlor door, and the orchestra’s strings swelled into the room. She shut the door with a bang behind her and was gone.
    To his father, he supposed.
    Andrew ran a hand through his hair. That had not gone as expected. Normally, he would have gone to ask Pelham or Fitzhugh’s advice, but both were involved with the closest friends of his new mortal enemy. He could not rely on them. He had other friends. But those friends were not what one might call sensible, and he could certainly not rely on them to give him any advice over and above which bawdy house offered the best girls or which gaming hell had the best odds.
    He opened the parlor door, stepped into the ballroom, and his gaze sought his father. There was Lily, standing at his side, making his father laugh with something she said. She looked over at him, said something more, and the circle of men and women around them laughed heartily.
    Andrew’s face flamed. How dare she presume to make him the subject of some jest? He would make her pay for this. He stomped out of the ballroom and called for his carriage.
    He thought of going to his club, but he knew his father and the Countess of Charm would be all the talk there. Instead, he directed his coachman to take him to a seedy part of Town. A place where he could wallow, undisturbed. He had his coachman stop on the outskirts of Seven Dials and ordered him home again. Then, walking stick at the ready, Andrew made his way into the bowels of the decrepit section of London until he reached The Horse and Crown.
    It was a favorite haunt when he had been younger and wanted to prowl the rookeries. Now he came to drink. He had been drinking quite a lot since his mother’s death and Juliette’s marriage. He found gin dulled the pain.
    He made his way to a back table and nodded to the gentleman seated there. The man nodded back. Flynn was not dressed in evening clothes, but he still looked the nobleman—the debauched nobleman. His coat was soiled, his hair had come loose from its queue, and his cravat spilled down his linen shirt. He had a drink before him and several empty cups on the table in front of him.
    “Darlington,” he said. He never slurred his words, though Andrew knew he must be drunk at times. He’d sat with the man and drank half what Flynn consumed and could barely walk home. “You look rather pretty tonight.”
    Andrew sat, and a buxom barmaid brought him a gin. She kissed his cheek and attempted to sit on his lap, but he picked her up and shooed her away. He could still taste Lily on his lips, and he didn’t want the barmaid tarnishing the memory.
    Which was a completely irrational thought. Which was why he needed the gin.
    “Ball tonight,” Andrew said and took a swallow of gin.
    “Ah, yes. Did you stop the nefarious woman from implementing her plan and luring your poor, innocent father into a marriage based on lust and money alone?”
    “How did you know all that?”
    Flynn indicated the glass of gin. “You talk when you drink.”
    “You make it sound ridiculous,” Andrew said.
    Flynn shrugged. “To each his own. My life has its own foibles.”
    Flynn never talked when he drank. Andrew knew almost nothing about the man except that he was heir to a title and he had done something horrible and did not deserve it. Andrew had thought about telling the man that if titles were deserved rather than inherited, his father would not be the Duke of Ravenscroft. But the man seemed content to wallow