Always a Rogue, Forever Her Love Read Free Page A

Albert Marshville?” The breathy whisper tore from her.
    Her brother downed his brandy and glared at her over the rim of his now empty glass. He reached for the bottle. “Do not call me Albert Marshville, as though you are my mother and I’m nothing more than a small child.”
    Juliet bit back the urge to keep from pointing out with the way he had been carrying on in London, gaming, whoring, carousing, well, he’d been behaving no better than an indolent lack-wit. She closed her eyes to dull the fury thrumming through her with a volatile life force. “Surely you did not gamble away Rosecliff Cottage.” Because the cottage, though small, had been the sole place she’d ever considered home in her twenty-two years. It had been there she’d learned to swim, ride her first mount, and all the while as the loved, favored daughter of her father, the now deceased Baronet Marshville.
    Albert scoffed. “Rosecliff is insignificant. It’s no matter.”
    No, to Albert it had never mattered. Nothing had mattered beyond her brother’s own selfish pleasures and desires.
    She wondered that he bore the same blood as their honorable, now departed father. “You must simply speak to this gentleman who you lost Rosecliff Cottage to, and explain—”
    “And explain what? That my shrewish, spinster sister imagines spending the rest of her days there?” Albert snorted. “You’ll wed, Juliet.”
    Her mouth went dry at this familiar topic of discussion. “Of course I will.” Or she still hoped with that foolishly optimistic sliver of her heart that still beat, that there would be a husband for her and a handful of happy babes.
    “Lord Williams is growing tired of waiting for you.”
    Gooseflesh dotted her arms. Lord Williams. With his noble brow and thick chestnut hair, he’d earned the oohs and aahs of nearly every lady in the county. Juliet, on the other hand, had gone to great lengths to avoid the gentleman since he’d first shown up, friend of her brother, recently of London, and visiting his recently acquired property in Kent. It was surely foolish on her part, a product of far too many Gothic novels, but something of him raised an unholy terror inside her. “I do not care to speak of Lord Williams.” She’d rather continue on the subject of Rosecliff Cottage.
    Albert gestured with a hand upon his hip and his leg stuck out in front of him like he was an English version of Boney, himself. “Well, talk on him, we will. You see,” he pushed away from his spot over by the window and strolled over. “He is the sole gentleman good enough to set aside concern with your being lame.”
    She winced at the mention of the leg she’d shattered as a girl of three and ten and he eleven. They’d climbed up the sturdy branches of the wych elm tree, up to the crown where the branches diverged, and he’d knocked into her. She’d tumbled to the ground and her leg had been badly broken. As she’d lain whimpering and crying on the ground with him standing above her grinning, she’d realized the extent of her brother’s hatred for her.
    Juliet tipped her chin up a notch, not willing to let him see the effect his cruel taunt had upon her. “You can hardly know the thoughts of all gentlemen, Albert, and certainly not the honorable gentlemen. Not when you keep company with such odious, foul creatures.”
    “Silence!” His shout boomed off the wall, more reminiscent of the young boy who’d kicked his toy soldiers around the room. Then, he seemed to remember himself. He smoothed his palms over the front of his jacket and drew in an audible breath. “As I was saying, Lord Williams would have you, if—”
    “Lord Henry will never allow it,” she interjected.
    “Lord Henry is dead.” He spoke so matter-of-fact; a chill stole down her spine.
    “He’s not.” A captain in the Royal Navy, Lord Henry’s ship had gone lost at sea several months back.
    “Yes, he is,” Albert, said mercilessly.
    She’d never met Lord Henry Thine,