To Tempt a Saint Read Online Free PDF Page B

Miss Finsbury accepted your proposal.”
    “She did not.”
    “That paper knighthood Prinny gave you didn’t impress your pigeon?”
    “I was honest with her.”
    “Quaint. She saw through you, then.”
    “That point has been made.” Xander had a vivid recollection of a pair of green eyes and a smart mouth.
    Will grinned. “Good, we wouldn’t want you to think that a tap on the shoulder from his royal fatness changes who you are.”
    Trust Will to remind him that his knighthood was a careless honor bestowed at the whim of an unpopular prince. Being Sir Alexander Jones did not change the facts of Xander’s birth.
    It was one thing for his brother to understand him so thoroughly, but it was unsettling for a bedraggled stranger to do so. She had made him realize what he’d been unwilling to admit to himself—how thoroughly reluctant a suitor he’d been. “In fact Miss Finsbury accused me of being a common fortune hunter.” He did not need to mention the other accusation the lady had made.
    “Ouch.”
    “I’ll live.”
    “Of course you will. It wasn’t a heart wound because you have no heart.”
    “An inconvenient appendage at best, prone to breaking, I hear.” Xander ventured a quick look at Will and noted a fresh cut above his brother’s right eye.
    “The question is—will your bleeding partners wait for you to raise the ready?”
    Xander shrugged. He had been invited to join the newly formed Metropolitan Works Group, one more change in his fortunes since the night he had come to the prince’s rescue. The MWG planned to transform London from an unhealthful maze of crooked lanes to a fitting capital for an empire. To launch the venture each member was expected to put up twenty thousand pounds of his own money. Xander had spent a great deal of his own money in the search for Kit. What he had left, a modest fortune, he kept invested, hence the great charm of Augusta Finsbury’s substantial dowry. Ready money was what he needed at the moment.
    “By the way, Brother, I have a letter for you.” Will handed him a creased and well-traveled envelope covered in a lacy feminine script.
    The letter’s spicy perfume reached Xander even among the competing scents of heated bodies and well-aled breath. He tucked it in an outer pocket of his coat. He would have his man air the coat tomorrow.
    “Not going to read it?”
    “I’m assuming you did. Is she well?”
    Will laughed. “You think I read your bleeding letters?”
    “I wouldn’t think much of your spying abilities if you didn’t.”
    “Paris agrees with her.”
    “Good.” He meant it. One member of their sorry family at least should find peace and a fresh beginning. Nearly three years of searching had not produced Kit. The restless pack of unanswered questions stirred to life in his mind. Who had taken Kit and why? Was he still alive? Was he in London or in some wretched corner of the wide globe? What more could they do to fi nd him?
    Attending these sessions was Will’s idea of a search strategy. In Will’s view London’s vast underworld was a network as elaborate as any assembled by army intelligence. Toshers and mudlarks, prigs, drabs, and hired fists were linked to fences and abbesses and even more shadowy employers. The vilest wretch passed through the dark labyrinth of inner London and saw and heard its secrets. Slowly, Xander and Will were plotting these connections, following the threads that linked pick-pockets and prostitutes and those that preyed on them.
    The buzz in the courtroom ceased as the bewigged magistrate entered the hall and took the bench. An officer bid the onlookers come to order.
    Xander studied the youth now leaning insolently against the iron-railed dock. His face had such a hungry, feral look, it was hard to tell his age. Xander guessed anywhere from twelve to fifteen. The boy had been groomed like a choirboy for his court appearance, but his features had the twisted quality of one hardened by life’s blows. He caught