The Secret Mistress Read Online Free PDF Page A

an almost immediate reason to leave the room, with apologies for doing so and instructions to her niece to entertain Lord Heyward while she was gone.
    Edward took both Eunice’s hands in his own as soon as they were alone and carried them one at a time to his lips—an extravagant gesture for him, but then it had been longer than a year since he last saw her.
    “Miss Goddard,” he said, “you are in good looks.”
    “As are you,
Lord Heyward
,” she said with grave emphasis upon his name. “Must we be formal, then, now that you are the earl? And must I be reassured with flatteries? Must you?”
    He smiled at her and squeezed her hands before releasing them.
    “I am happy to see you again, Eunice,” he said. “One frustration of spending the past year at Wimsbury has been my inability to see you and enjoy your conversation.”
    “I hope,” she said, “your duties as earl are not proving too burdensome. But I know you will perform them conscientiously.”
    “I must take my seat in the House of Lords,” he told her. “I will enjoy listening to the debates, even participating in them. The one thing I do
not
look forward to, though, is delivering my maiden speech.”
    “But you will do brilliantly at it,” she assured him, resuming her seat so that he could take his. “You have a superior mind and have cultivated it with discerning reading. Have you chosen a topic?”
    “Not yet,” he said with a sigh. “But I will soon. I so wish to say something of lasting significance.”
    “You will,” she said. “I trust your mother is well? Losing a sonmust be the very worst bereavement any woman can be called upon to suffer. Or any man for that matter.”
    “She was close to collapse for several months,” he said, “and still suffers. She has found a new purpose in life, though. She has set herself the task of finding me a suitable bride.”
    He smiled ruefully at her.
    She did not smile back.
    “It is commendable in her,” she said. “You must marry soon, of course. It is your duty.”
    Both her facial expression and her posture were unreadable. She appeared relaxed. Her hands, clasped in her lap, were neither white-knuckled nor fidgeting.
    “But I have already made my choice,” he told her.
    She looked steadily at him for a few moments.
    “If you are referring to me,” she said, “and a
very
informal agreement we made all of four years ago when both of us were minors, then you must not regard it as any sort of obligation whatsoever, Edward. I would not be an eligible bride for an earl.”
    “Why not?” he asked her.
    “Perhaps
eligible
is not the right word,” she said after giving the matter some thought. “I am a lady. I am fit to be the bride of any gentleman, no matter what his rank and fortune.
Desirable
would be a better word. Or
brilliant
. I would not be a brilliant match for you, Edward.”
    “I do not ask for brilliance,” he said.
    “No,” she agreed. “You are not so swayed by outer trappings. But you have responsibilities to more than just yourself now. You must marry, and you must marry well. You need more than just
any
bride. You need a
countess
. Your mother and your sisters will know who is most eligible.”
    “And my grandmother and sister-in-law?” he said.
    “Oh, dear,” she said with warm sympathy. “Them too? Poor Edward, they must seem like an army. But yes, together they will find just the right bride for you.”
    “For me?” he asked her. “Or for the Earl of Heyward?”
    She regarded him gravely.
    “When your brother died,” she said, “and you became the Earl of Heyward, you lost the right to think only of yourself and your own comfort, Edward. You
are
the earl. But of course I tell you only what you already know and accept. You are not a man to shirk your responsibilities. It is one thing I have always admired in you. You must
not
now feel obligated by a sort of agreement you made with me long ago when the circumstances of your life were very different