The Gamble Read Online Free PDF Page A

the date, Aunt, and the ballroom will be at your service,” said Winterdale.
    I could scarcely believe that I was hearing all of this. Things were proceeding beyond my wildest dreams.
    After a little more discussion between aunt and nephew in regard to the come out, Lady Winterdale made her departure and I was allowed to step out from behind my drapery. I stood there in front of it and looked at him.
    “You heard what transpired, Miss Newbury,” Lord Winterdale said blandly. “Are you satisfied?”
    “I am very satisfied, my lord,” I said slowly. “What is it that you wish me to do now?”
    “Where are you staying at the moment?” he asked.
    “Grillon’s.”
    “Well you can’t remain there alone. Nor can you come here until my aunt is installed to chaperone you. I suggest that you go home and wait until I write to tell you that it is proper for you to return to Mansfield House.”
    I nodded.
    “Where is Weldon Hall?”
    “It is in Sussex, my lord.”
    “You must give me the direction.” He moved to his desk, sat down and picked up a pen. I gave him the direction to Weldon Hall and he wrote it down.
    “I don’t think that it will take very long for Aunt Agatha to move in,” he said ironically, “so I would be prepared to return quickly.”
    I nodded.
    He blotted his paper and looked up at me. “Well, I think that will be all, Miss Newbury,” he said. He did not get out of his chair. “By the way, what is your first name?”
    “It is Georgiana, my lord.”
    He nodded. “Miss Georgiana Newbury.”
    He wrote it down, as if he would forget it if he did not do so.
    I said coldly, “I have been wondering what caused you to change your mind so abruptly, my lord. You were ready to show me the door, and then all of a sudden I was hiding behind the drapery and discovering that I was your ward.”
    “I did it to annoy my aunt, Miss Newbury,” he said with a devilish lift of those reckless eyebrows. “I confess that I expect to derive a good deal of pleasure from seeing her fury this Season as she is forced to escort you around with Catherine.”
    I thought that Lady Winterdale was a woman who had lost both her husband and her son under tragic circumstances and surely deserved a little more consideration than was being shown her by her nephew. However, since I was the beneficiary of his heartlessness, I held my tongue.
    I said instead, “It sounds to me as if you will be spending a great deal of money on this presentation. Is it worth it?”
    “Oh yes, Miss Newbury,” he said. “Believe me, it is.”

CHAPTER
three
    I RETURNED TO G RILLON ’ S IN A VERY PECULIAR FRAME of mind. I should have been delighted, I thought. After all, had I not achieved everything I had come to London to achieve? I was going to make my come out in society under the sponsorship of a lady of impeccable connections and reputation. I would have an opportunity to meet a great many eligible young men, and surely one of them would like me well enough to make me an offer, and surely I would like him well enough to feel that living with him would not be an eternal penance.
    I was delighted, I told myself. But the truth was that I was also infuriated. I had never, in all my life, met anyone who had so instantly set up my back as the Earl of Winterdale.
    Really, he was quite the rudest man I had ever met. Writing my name down as if otherwise he would forget it!
    Why, he had not even inquired about how I had traveled to London. Doubtless I would have to return home on the stage, and then, when he deigned to write to inform me that the time was appropriate for me to return, I would be forced to travel back to Grosvenor Square on the stage as well. With all the clothes that he had insulted dragged along with me inside my portmanteau.
    With one part of my mind I knew that I was being unreasonable, that it was unfair to expect a man whom one was blackmailing to behave toward one as if one were a lady. But the fact remained that I thought he