Bedding The Baron Read Free

disposal?” he asked softly.
    “Because you were born to be shackled to some harridan who will run roughshod over you until you are badgered into the grave,” Ian retorted.
    “No, Ian.” Raoul regarded Fredrick with a shrewd, piercing gaze. Fredrick found himself resisting the urge to squirm beneath that steady regard. Raoul had an uncanny knack of seeing far beneath the surface of a person. Almost as if he could read their very soul. It was no doubt what made him such a good actor. “Our Fredrick is destined for quite another fate.”
    “And what is that?” Ian demanded.
    “Fredrick happens to be one of those rare and fortunate gentlemen who are destined for true love.”
    “Bah. It still includes a wife and a pack of squawking brats, poor blighter,” Ian groused.
    Fredrick rose to his feet, not nearly so flippant about discussing the future as his friends. He was superstitious enough to leave fate (or whatever one wanted to call it) well enough alone.
    “As fascinating as I find your profound predictions, I believe we would be better served to devote our attention to our more pressing matter,” he said firmly.
    Raoul reached out to give Fredrick’s shoulder a brief squeeze, as if sympathizing with Fredrick’s reluctance to discuss his very private dreams.
    “No doubt you are right, old friend, but at the moment all we are doing is speculating with no real means of knowing the actual truth. Dunnington might or might not have extorted our respective fathers to rescue us and begin this school. There is simply no way of knowing for certain.”
    Ian grimaced. “Dunnington managed to take his secrets to the grave.”
    Fredrick paused as he was struck by a sudden thought. “Yes, odd that.”
    “What?” Ian demanded.
    It was Fredrick’s turn to do a bit of pacing. “Why did he not reveal the truth when we reached our majority?” he demanded. “God knows we could each have used such a fortune at that time.”
    They exchanged knowing glances as they recalled the lean years when each of them had been forced to struggle to carve a place in a world that was determined to offer them nothing.
    “Holy hell,” Ian rasped. “When I think of the years I spent dodging the collectors and living in flea ridden rooms . . .”
    “Oh, come, you know Dunnington,” Raoul drawled. “He would have told you that a man’s character is formed by his suffering, not by his successes. He wanted us to learn to survive by our wits. It is what he preached on a daily basis.”
    Ian’s expression revealed precisely what he thought of such a philosophy, but Fredrick was more concerned with what must have been going through Dunnington’s mind.
    “That is no doubt part of the reason,” he agreed. “Dunnington did possess a strange obsession with teaching a man to stand on his own two feet. Still, I think . . .”
    Silence descended in the room as Fredrick struggled to put his thoughts into words.
    “Well, do not leave us in suspense, Fredrick,” Ian at last prompted.
    Fredrick gave a lift of his hands. “Just consider the fact that if Dunnington had given us our legacies, he would have been forced to explain how he came by them.”
    “You are off the mark if you believe that Dunnington would have been too ashamed to confess the truth of his . . . unique methods of gaining the necessary capital to begin this school,” Raoul swiftly countered. “For all his fanciful notions of teaching, he was at heart a practical man who would take full responsibility for his choices.”
    “Yes, I agree with you,” Fredrick said. “I was thinking more along the lines of protecting us.”
    Ian frowned. “Protect us? From what?”
    Fredrick moved to stare out the window. There was nothing much to see on the quiet street. A maid shivering against the frigid breeze as she polished the doorknob across the way, a coal wagon clattering over the rough cobblestone road, a young boy and his nanny taking a walk through the garden. It was all quite