A Rake by Any Other Name Read Free Page A

family would be there tomorrow, and he needed to put his best foot forward.
    Only three figures assembled to the left side of the door.
    â€œOne of my sisters seems to be absent. Probably Petra,” Richard said. “We never could keep her out of the haymow. She’d hide there from her governess all day, squirreled away with a few apples and a book.”
    â€œA book? What a waste of a perfectly good haymow,” Seymour said dryly. “Perhaps someone should show Lady Petra what a roll in the hay is like sans reading material.”
    Richard skewered his friend with a glare. “I wasn’t joking about those shears.”

Two
    Secrets are the most delicious morsels, but only when one is gobbling them up. Keeping them down often gives one the most frightful indigestion.
    â€”Phillippa, the Dowager Marchioness of Somerset
    â€œStand up straight, David,” Mr. Hightower said under his breath while the son of the house climbed down from the carriage to greet his mother and sisters.
    Two of his sisters, at least , David thought.
    David Abbot resisted the urge to shift his weight from one foot to the other. Someone was going to catch it because Lady Petra had gone missing again. He was bound and determined it wasn’t going to be him this time.
    Like the military man he’d once been, Mr. Hightower ordered in a rough whisper, “Eyes straight ahead.”
    David straightened his spine and tried to watch from the corner of his eye as Lord Hartley leaned to kiss his mother’s cheek. Her chin quivered, but she didn’t dissolve into tears of joy over the return of her firstborn.
    The Barretts weren’t that sort of family. There was no excess, no superfluous displays of affection.
    Lord Hartley’s sisters were only a little more demonstrative. Lady Ella, the eldest and acknowledged blond beauty of the bunch, returned her brother’s kiss on the cheek. The youngest, Lady Ariel, gave him a grin and a quick hug. But on the whole, the Barretts were like a flock of swans on the trout pond, long necks dipping in unison, moving in unhurried concert.
    Nothing disturbed the tranquility and dignity of the Somerset name.
    It was so different from David’s distant memories of his own mother and her wild swings between tender overindulgence and foxed neglect. He gave himself a brisk shake and tucked the past back into the deepest corner of his mind. In many ways, his real life had begun when he came to Somerfield at the age of six to serve as his lordship’s bootblack boy. Now some twenty-odd years later, David had worked his way up through the below stairs ranks to become a footman.
    Not bad for a boy of no background from Brighton.
    â€œIt’s so good to have you home, Hart,” Lady Somerset was saying. “At last.”
    The big double doors carved with the marquessate’s coat of arms opened behind them. David heard the squeak of a wheelchair, but on pain of another censure from Mr. Hightower, he didn’t turn to look. Instead, a tingle of apprehension danced down his spine.
    â€œMr. Witherspoon,” Lord Hartley said. “I expected to see the doctor wheeling my father around, not his man of business.”
    â€œWe have much to discuss, my lord,” Mr. Witherspoon said. “And unfortunately, it cannot wait.”
    David’s belly tightened at that. Every day for the last month, he’d all but tiptoed around the great house. At any moment, he expected his lordship to recover well enough to tell someone what really happened the day he fell off the roof.
    With a sick taste in his mouth, David wondered would happen to a boy from Brighton then.
    ***
    â€œBut what was Father doing on the roof in the first place?” Richard had been steered into the parlor by his mother and Mr. Witherspoon so they could talk without the household looking on. His father was there as well, but the marquess hadn’t contributed a thing to the conversation. Richard