Scandal's Reward Read Online Free PDF

what would you expect me to do with family heirlooms? Sell them and support my dissolute lifestyle, of course.”
    “Then you can go to the devil!”
    Dagonet’s eyes opened a little in amused astonishment. “How can I possibly go, George, where I already reside?”
    The curtains parted and fell together again and he was gone.
    Catherine brutally ignored her own emotions. Her hands were full with two hysterical women and a puce-faced man who was throwing back glass after glass of brandy, while doing nothing whatsoever to recover the stolen property.
    Just as she finished with the burnt feathers and the smelling salts, Sir George turned to the women and said, “What the deuce did he mean by that Horatio stuff? Damn him!”
    The vicar’s daughter was the only one who could answer.
    “William Shakespeare, Sir George. Hamlet, Act one ,” Catherine said. “When the ghost of his father appears to Hamlet. I believe Horatio replies something like this: ‘In what particular thought to work I know not; / But, in the gross and scope of my opinion, / This bodes some strange eruption to our state.’ I fear we may be in for some disruption to our peace and tranquillity here at Lion Court.”
     

Chapter 3
     
    Devil Dagonet rode straight along the coast road through Fernbridge to Stagshead. He had left his horse, since he had been so unceremoniously turned away from the stables, tied to the railings in the woods at Lion Court. At Stagshead, in contrast, he had no such difficulty, for he put his mount into a loose box and rubbed down the gray himself.
    A few minutes later he strode unchallenged into the study and poured himself a glass of brandy, then dropped with the simple ease of the athlete into a chair beside the fire. He propped his booted feet on the fender and leaned back, the firelight playing over the planes of his face.
    Before long, quick footsteps sounded in the corridor, the door was flung open, and Captain David Morris stood framed on the threshold. Dagonet casually turned his head and at the look on the newcomer’s face burst out laughing.
    “What did you fear, Captain? That I should be chained in a dungeon by my cousin and be removed forever from the company of civilized men? Fortunately, Lion Court doesn’t possess an oubliette, much to my great regret as a boy. I will freely admit, however, that the meeting was quite unpleasant, and if cousin George were a medieval baron and not a modern man-about-town, you might now be hearing the echoes of my groans, hollow in the moorland mists.”
    “But he must have been expecting you? Surely out of common courtesy he would receive you with good grace? You’re first cousins.”
    “And blood is thicker than water? But, my honest friend, Sir George Montagu has no blood in his veins, only bile. Of course he was expecting me! I have written to him at least three times this last month. Any courtesy in our exchange, however, has been entirely on my side. His only response was a damnably rude warning to keep away. He was no more sympathetic in the flesh.”
    “So he refused you the house?”
    “He did more. He had told the servants to set upon me with horsewhips. It was only my insufferable charm that persuaded them to desist, and the skills that we honed together in the Peninsula. So, after escaping from the dubious welcome of the henchmen, I crept in at the window, instead, and awaited my loving relations in their own drawing room.”
    “Charles, you didn’t!” Captain Morris poured himself a drink and sat down opposite his guest. His brow was still marred by a slight frown of anxiety.
    Dagonet tossed back his brandy. “You should have been there. Not only did I enter the house like a common thief, but then conducted myself in a perfect imitation of Tom Faggus, the famous Exmoor highwayman. Here’s my haul!”
    He set down his glass. The jewels slid from his pocket and lay bright in the candlelight across his lean hands. “Rather pretty, don’t you