Tall, Dark and Disreputable Read Online Free PDF Page A

believe her, but he had a need to question her closely, and a rising desire to compare stories.
    I need your help , she’d said, and she’d mentioned something about her own dilemma. It set his mind awhirl, with curiosity and, worse, a growing sense of suspicion. His father’s heavy-handed manipulation blared loud and obvious, but could Portia truly have been unaware of her part in it?
    As he’d already done hundreds of times, Mateo dragged his memory for details of the thwarted marriage scheme Leandro Cardea and the Earl of Winbury had attempted nearly nine years ago. Their timing had been preposterous. Mateo had been completely occupied with his sleek new schooner, and theopportunity for fortune, glory and adventure that privateering would give him and his crew. The notion of a marriage had been his father’s last, desperate attempt to steer him from that course. Ever the rebel, Mateo had laughed at the idea—and at his father’s clumsy choice of a bride.
    Portia Varnsworth? A girl-child she’d been, with plenty of pluck, but no more appeal than a younger sister. At the time he’d hoped she’d been just as incredulous as he. He’d written to her with that assumption, and certainly her response had reassured him. She was far too young to contemplate such a thing, she’d replied, and entirely too caught up with a landscaping project on her father’s estate. And there was the Season for her to look forward to the following year. Mateo had sighed in relief and promptly forgot the entire scheme.
    But he had thought of her occasionally, over the years. He remembered her shy smile and her willingness to listen. He’d been surprised and curious at the news of her marriage, and sympathetic when he’d heard of her husband’s death. Had anyone asked, he would have confessed to remembering her fondly.
    Until the day he’d sat in the solicitor’s office and heard that his father had left the controlling interest in Cardea Shipping to her. Instead of leading the family legacy into the future, he would be working for Portia Varnsworth.
    Mateo’s shock had been complete. Doubt and suspicion had sprouted like weeds in his mind. And if hehadn’t been so angry, he would have laughed at the—once again—impeccable bad timing of the thing.
    At the thought he urged his mount to a quicker pace. Whatever the outcome of this meeting, someone had to quickly take control of Cardea Shipping. Ahead must be the lane that would take him to Stenbrooke. He took the turning, but after only a few minutes’ travel he found himself distracted. Gazing about him, Mateo realised that, of a certainty, there was one thing about his childhood friend that had not changed.
    Portia Tofton, née Varnsworth, was a gardener. Digging, planting, pruning, cutting, Portia had never been happier than when she was covered in muck. Looking about, it became clear that she had continued to indulge her beloved pastime here at Stenbrooke.
    The lane he followed led first through a wooded grove, immaculately kept and dotted with the occasional early-blooming clump of monk’s hood. Eventually, though, the wood thinned, giving way to a sweeping vista of rolling hills. Ahead the path diverged. To the left, over the tops of a grouping of trees, he caught sight of a peaked roof. On the right nestled a jewel of a lake, edged with flowering shrubs and spanned by a rustic stone bridge.
    Mateo marvelled at the beauty of the scene. Then he spared a moment’s empathy for the hardship some sea captain had endured in transporting the obviously exotic specimens.
    He shook his head. The landscaping work here was awe-inspiring. Surely Brown or Repton had had a hand in it. Had Portia kept this up herself after her husband’s passing? But of course she had. Care and attention to detail were evident in every direction.
    It was ongoing even now, he noted, catching sight of several labourers grouped on the far side of the bridge. Standing thigh-high in the lake, they were