A Baron for Becky Read Free Page B

bundles.
    Several times,
he came into the summerhouse to talk. Aldridge asked after the
woman they were hunting.
    “She, I must
suppose,” he said, “is this Rose that Perry spoke of so highly. I
must say, if she is as good in bed as she is to look at, she’s
worth every penny Perry wanted for her. If your men find her, I
would like to make an offer.”
    Tiny made an
answer, in which ‘The Rose of Frampton’ was the only familiar
phrase, and that only because Rose was accustomed to the label
she’d been given, ten years ago, by the abbess who had taken her
when her father cast her out.
    After the
brothel, she had moved from protector to protector. Perry, may he
roast in Hell forever, was to have been her last. He’d promised her
the cottage, showered her with jewellery, even let her keep Sarah
with her. But when he tied her up, he’d told her the cottage was
never hers, that the deeds he’d given her were fake. And he’d
sorted through her jewels while she sat cuffed to the bed cursing
him, leaving the ones he said were paste, and taking the few good
pieces.
    When she had
stashed some clothes and jewellery in the bench seat in case she
needed to run, she had laughed at her own fears. Why would she wish
to escape from her own house? From her last protector, who was a
gambler and a drunkard, but not a violent man? But her escape
baskets were a habit established for years, and into the seat they
went.
    Now her only
question was how much of the hidden jewellery was paste? How many
of her previous protectors had played her for a fool? Perry, the
belly-crawling sack of slime, had given her one piece of good
advice: “You should have hired a solicitor, Rose,” he told her.
“All the smart beauties do. Too late now, though. No lawyers in
Smite’s world.”
    If she had to
find herself another protector, she’d insist on a written contract,
and hire someone to check that he not only seemed wealthy, but
actually was. She sighed, taking care to stay silent. She had hoped
to leave this life behind her, to give Sarah a fresh start, away
from this business. Her hopes were dust now. Even if the rest of
her jewellery were real, it wouldn’t raise enough for them to
survive.
    And what were
her other choices—assuming she and Sarah got out of this alive?
With her past, no one would give her a respectable job, and what
marketable skills did she have? It would be the workhouse, where
they would separate her from Sarah, or another protector.
    Perhaps she
should try her luck in London, where rich men were more plentiful,
or so she had heard. Perhaps Aldridge would help her.
Perhaps...
    Her heart, her
breathing; everything stopped for a moment while she considered the
thought that crept up on her. Perhaps Aldridge meant it when he
claimed to be attracted to her, perhaps even when he said he wished
to make an offer. Was he in the market for a mistress? And could a
provincial whore hope to win his interest?
    She was so busy
remembering everything she had heard about the Merry Marquis that
she almost missed the crunch of footsteps outside.
    “Are you
‘Tiny’?” Another upper-class voice, consonants so crisp they could
cut.
    “Rede?”
Aldridge said, the boards creaking as he shifted his weight. “Rede,
you came yourself?”
    The cousin
replied, “With a message like that? ‘Stuck at Perringworth’s
cottage just outside Niddberrow. No clothes, no horse, no money.
Send closed carriage to the summerhouse, urgently. Your loving
cousin, Aldridge.’ Fetching kilt, cousin. Pink roses on a green
field. Setting a new fashion?”
    Aldridge
laughed. “I’ll bet you a gold guinea, at least a dozen people would
imitate me, were I to walk through Hyde Park dressed like this. I
did think it rather better than the alternative, especially if I
had to walk all the way to the Court.”
    “I have not
been introduced to your friend,” the cousin said.
    “Ah. A friend
of a friend, shall we say. Tiny, aide-de-camp to Smite, of
Seven Dials in