The Baron’s Betrothal: An On-Again, Off-Again, On-Again Regency Romance (The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

ground floor, just as he had so many times as a young man. He let himself into the vestibule first and then through the inner kitchen door and stood watching Cook. She was a great pudding of a woman with graying blonde flyaway hair barely captured by an off-kilter mobcap. She gestured with a spoon to underscore some point she was making to Rodwell, who sat at the big worktable in the middle of the room, sipping tea in a mug. Rodwell stood up and bowed. Cook glanced out of the corner of her eye and froze when she saw the baron. The maids skidded to a halt and footmen leapt to their feet.
    Clun smiled at one and all, a blanket pardon and reassurance.  
    The maids curtseyed and resumed their work; the footmen bowed and found work to busy themselves. Penfold and Mrs. Wirt, wringing her hands, bustled in and begged pardon for their dereliction. They would have had the entire staff lined up outside the front door to greet the baron properly the instant he returned, if not for their inattention.
    “Pray, don’t trouble yourselves. I came on the sly,” Clun said. “Just to sneak up on you.”  
    The butler and housekeeper relaxed at his playful teasing and they excused themselves to oversee the flurry of activity his sudden appearance prompted.  
    The kitchen emptied of everyone but Clun, Cook and Rodwell.
    “Can it be? Look, Roddy, our wee Master William is home at last! Oh dear! Beg pardon,” she dipped a curtsey as he approached. “Welcome home, your lordship!” Then rising on tiptoe, she grappled the large man into her far shorter, fleshier embrace and rocked him to and fro.  
    “I must breathe, Cook. Truly. Or I’ll collapse.”  
    Her head rested just at his chest, “Nonsense. You look fagged out and in need of this.” She clasped him in one last crushing hug that squeezed a boyish grin from him. “There now!”  
    Cook had known and loved Clun from earliest childhood. Even after he grew into hulking manhood, she continued to treat him as if he were a small boy, indulging and chiding as she saw fit. Cook, and only Cook, dared do so.
    She held him at arm’s length and took in his spattered boots, sweat-stained linen shirt, open waistcoat, rumpled redingote and greatcoat. “Back in one piece, Lord be praised! What took so long, my lord? Looks as if you just mopped up old Boney today, but you finished him off last year at least.”  
    Clun snorted. Like Mrs. Wirt, Cook spoke of his lordship as if her ‘wee Master William’ had single-handedly brought Napoleon Bonaparte to his knees. Her confidence in his ability, conveyed at her insistence in each of Roddy’s letters, had amused the other Horsemen of the Apocalypse no end. And while Clun may have grimaced at her effusions, he loved her all the more for them. He received scant acknowledgement from either parent. His mother’s few letters were full of reproach for endangering the direct de Sayre line with his ‘antics.’
    “Where have you been?” Cook narrowed her eyes and scanned him again. “At hard labor from the looks of it.”
    “Why not? Aren’t I full of surprises?” He pulled his sweaty hair from his brow.
    “Always were.” She beamed at the big man seating himself at the table. “Roddy, doesn’t our baron look fine?”
    “I’ve been riding for days, Cook. I look a mess,” he said and gestured for Roddy to sit again. “Roddy, how are you?”
    “Quite well, my lord. Thank you for asking.” Tyler Rodwell was not quite so large as the current baron, and his eyes were vivid blue. Otherwise, Clun and his bastard half-brother closely resembled their father, William Tyler Powys de Sayre, the late Baron Clun.  
    “Roddy told us you’d be home next month with bride in hand. What a treat to have you sooner!” Cook clasped her hands before her ample bosom and smiled. “Where is she then?”
    “Unusual girl, Cook. An earl’s daughter.”
    “I’m not at all surprised. Who could resist you?” Cook said with a conviction that made both