Vicar's Daughter to Viscount's Lady Read Online Free PDF Page A

herself.‘He was in the country, staying with his friend Marcus Daunt at Long Fallow Hall a few miles away. He admitted he was on a repairing lease because he was not feeling too well. The last thing he had expected was to fall in love, he told me.’
    ‘That must have been the infection beginning,’ Lord Hadleigh said. ‘I wondered where he had been. He was in London when he died.’
    It seemed odd that he did not know his own brother’s movements. And how strange that she had not sensed that he was ill; somehow the baby made a connection between them that should have been tangible, however much she hated him. ‘When was it? Did he…was there much pain?’ The room blurred as she struggled to get her emotions under control. This was her baby’s father; even after everything, she did not want him to have suffered agonies.
    ‘He was in some pain at first, they tell me, but he slipped into unconsciousness very quickly. Miss Shelley—’ He got to his feet and came round the table to crouch down beside her, his movements lithe. He was fit, she thought vaguely, and fast. ‘I am sorry, that was too abrupt. Here, drink some wine.’ He picked up the glass and wrapped her fingers around it, guiding hand and glass to her lips.
    She drank a little. ‘Thank you. I am all right. I wanted to know, it is better than imagining things.’ She made herself go on with her story as he went back to his seat. It was hard to look at him: he was so like Rafe and yet, so different. He seemed kind, he seemed caring. So had Rafe—at first. Beware , the voice of experiencewhispered. He’s a man. ‘We loved each other—I thought—but I warned him about Papa, who became angry if I and my sisters so much as spoke to the curate.’
    ‘Viscount Hadleigh is hardly the curate,’ the current holder of the title observed drily. He got to his feet, removed her soup plate and began to carve a capon. ‘Are the side dishes within your reach?’ He handed her a plate with meat and served himself.
    ‘Thank you, yes.’
    ‘Go on, Miss Shelley. He loved you, you loved him, but your father would object because he wanted to keep you at home for his own comfort.’
    ‘We spoke of marriage and made plans. Rafe would go back to London, organise the settlements and return to present Papa with a fait accompli —he was even going to employ a good housekeeper and bring her with him so Papa would not be abandoned. It all seemed perfect, that day. I was head over heels in love and…We became lovers. He asked and I…He said I could not love him, if I refused. So I did as he asked me.’
    She could not go on. She was not going to describe the horror of it all disintegrating about her. The nightmare. She had loved Rafe, she knew she would have learned to please him in bed if she had had the chance, if he had cared for her in return and had wanted to teach her. But—’That is all,’ she concluded abruptly and looked up to find Elliott Calne’s eyes studying her with something painfully like pity in them.
    Elliott was silent, twisting his wine glass between long fingers.
    Further intimate revelations seemed beyond Bella, but good manners insisted she try to make some kind of conversation. She could not just sit and sob, however bad she felt. ‘Forgive me,’ she ventured, ‘but were you and your brother close?’
    ‘You mean, I presume, how like him am I?’ That question appeared to amuse him. The smile appeared, and goose bumps ran up and down her spine. It was some form of sorcery, that smile. In combination with those eyes it should be illegal. ‘Not very, except in looks. I am the boringly well-behaved younger brother, after all.’
    Boring hardly seemed the word. Bella made herself focus on him, not just on his resemblance to Rafe. Nor, she guessed, was well behaved an accurate description. There was an edge to Elliott Calne’s observations that suggested a cheerfully cynical view of the world and a lack of shock at her story that made her