The Duke's Secret Desire (Regency Romance) (Regency Lords Book 4) Read Online Free PDF Page A

getting rid of you and your child, the Crown will be able to claim your lands and your wealth. I will not allow the British to use you to achieve their perfidious ends. I will send a carriage at three o’clock to come to your aid. Tell no one that you are leaving. Depart from the door in the back, through the garden, where you will not be seen. The carriage will be waiting. Conceal yourself so that no one will know who you are.”
    Arya questioned the boy but he clearly knew nothing and had been chosen for this errand because of his youth and his inability to read. Param was taking no chances.
    But was he telling the truth? Was her life, and her child’s life, in danger from the British? Was Bartholomew part of a vicious scheme to acquire her lands or was he merely an unwitting pawn in a much bigger plot?
    She would obtain no answers from her husband but she knew that her brother was aware of everything that went on in the province. Her father had always said that Param had his ear so close to the ground that the ants told him secrets.. She needed answers and she resolved to get them.

SEVEN
     
    “She’s not here, sir,” the maid told him.
    “What do you mean, the Duchess is not here. Where could she have gone?”
    Bartholomew had returned home at the end of the day to find his wife absent. He had stalked through the house, calling her name, opening every door to every room. Racing back down the stairs, he confronted the stolid maid.
    “I don’t know, your lordship. When I returned to the drawing room, no one was there and the Duchess’s cloak was gone. I thought she must have gone calling.”
    “She was told to stay here,” Bartholomew said. “What could have induced her to leave?”
    “She received a message, sir.”
    “A message? Why didn’t you say so? A message from whom?”
    “Her brother.”
    “Her brother took her?”
    “No, sir.”
    Was the girl simple or daft? Was she incapable of providing an account of the events which had led to her mistress’ departure? Forcing himself to mind his temper, Bartholomew questioned the girl further. He learned that Param Singh himself had not come to the house, but had sent a messenger, a young boy, who had said he had a message to deliver to Madame by hand. Madame had said to bring the boy in, and the maid had left. She didn’t know what happened after that, except that when she entered the room with the tea tray, Madame was gone and the room was vacant.
    “Where is the message?”
    “I don’t know, sir.”
    “It must be here, unless she disposed of it.”
    “I don’t know, sir.”
    “Apparently,” Bartholomew said bitingly. The girl merely looked back at him with no expression on her face. He went back upstairs to Arya’s bedroom. She seemed to have taken nothing with her except her cloak. He roamed about the room, opening drawers, looking for something, although he didn’t know what. Finally, lying on the floor as if it had been forgotten, he found a note in an unfamiliar hand and he read the message that had sent his wife to flight.
    Bartholomew read the note again. It was ludicrous that she would have given credit to such a message which asserted that her life was in danger from the British. What was Param Singh’s plan?
    Without another word, Bartholomew left the room, ordering the footman to have his horse saddled.
    “Yes, sir. Where will you be going?”
    “I have a business engagement,” the Duke replied coolly, wondering whom in the house he could trust. He had not thought to vet the household servants, but it was obvious that someone within was working with outside forces and Bartholomew suspected that Param Singh had inserted his own spies into the staff.
    The Major General, when he received the message from his aide-de-camp that the Duke of Middleton was in the library to see him on an urgent matter, agreed with Bartholomew’s premise. “Param Singh will do anything he can to break the truce that’s keeping the peace in the province