A Most Unconventional Match Read Free

linens, checking silver, ordering coal—I had no idea how much was required to run a household. Did you know there are at least seventeen different recipes for preparing chicken?’
    â€˜Seventeen?’ He chuckled. ‘Who would have thought?’
    â€˜And where does one obtain the coin to pay one’s servants?’ She shook her head and sighed. ‘Miss Lowery and Everitt spoiled me dreadfully, I’m discovering.’
    Holburn took her hand and patted it. ‘Dear lady, you are too young and lovely to trouble yourself with such trivialities! Now that I’ve returned to London, I do hope you’ll allow me to lift some of those burdens from your shoulders.’ Letting go of her fingers, he extracted a small purse from the pocket of his coat. ‘How much coin do you need for the servants?’
    Tempting as it was to transfer all her tiresome duties into his willing hands, Elizabeth hesitated. Husband’s best friend notwithstanding, there was no link of kinship between them whatsoever. She could not but feel it went beyond the limits of what was proper to accept any of his kindly offered assistance. Without doubt, she knew she must not take money from him, even as a temporary loan.
    â€˜That won’t be necessary, Sir Gregory, although I do thank you for offering. You must ignore my hen-hearted complaining! I shall learn to manage soon enough.’
    â€˜You are sure?’ When she nodded, he continued, ‘Very well, I shall do nothing—this time. But my offer stands. I should be honoured to assist you in any way, at any time.’
    As the mantel clock chimed the hour, she rose. David would be waiting for her, anxious for his nuncheon. ‘Should you like to join us for some light refreshment?’
    â€˜You will take it with your son?’
    â€˜Yes. By noon he’s grown quite peckish.’
    â€˜I fear I must decline. Another time, perhaps?’
    â€˜Of course.’ She escorted him from the parlour, secretly relieved he’d refused the invitation she’d felt obligated to offer. But Sir Gregory did not enjoy children—and David, perhaps sensing as children often do the attitude of the adults around them, most decidedly did not like Sir Gregory.
    Some time this afternoon, she still must solve the riddle of paying her servants. Turning her visitor over to Sands, with a longing glance in the direction of her studio, Elizabeth walked upstairs to find her son.

    In his bachelor quarters on the other side of Mayfair, Hal Waterman frowned at the notice printed in the newspaper. Having returned to London just last evening after spending two months monitoring a new canal project in the north, he was still sorting through the journals and correspondence that had accumulated in his absence.
    Carrying the paper with him, Hal dropped into the chair by the fireplace where his valet Jeffers had left him a glass of wine, gratefully settling back against its wide, custom-designed cushions. Taller and more powerfully built than most of his countrymen, after his sojourn in assorted inns over the last weeks, he was thoroughly tired of trying to sleep in beds too short for his long legs and sit in wing chairs too narrow for his broad shoulders.
    Scanning the notice again, he sighed. Mr Everitt Lowery , it read, of Lowery Manor in Oxfordshire and Green Street in London, unexpectedly expired in this city on the seventh inst. —almost six weeks ago now. Surviving him are his widow, Elizabeth, née Wellingford, and one son, David.
    Elizabeth. Even now, seven years after his first glimpse of her at the wedding of his friend Nicholas to her sister Sarah, the whisper of her name reverberated through his mind, exciting a tingling in his nerves and a stirring in his loins.
    Despite knowing Nicky’s wedding service had been about to begin, he’d barely been able to keep himself from bolting from the room that long-ago day. As it was, drenched in panic,