Bewitching Read Free Page B

to listen to her," Downe said with a cynical smile. "Don't want to bring any bad luck down on the esteemed Belmore name."
    Alec gave his friend a cool look, crossed his arms, and stood there as if he did not give a brass farthing about all the idiotic things the woman said. But even he had trouble looking bored when the woman started prattling on about his love life. Downe, however, was doing a poor job of repressing his mirth, and Neil appeared to be hanging on the hag's every word.
    "Ye won't be marryin' the girl ye think ye will, Yer Grace."
    Foolish woman, Alec thought. The announcement was to hit the papers the next morning. Lady Juliet Elizabeth Spencer, daughter of the Earl and Countess of Worth, would wed Alec Gerald Castlemaine, Duke of Belmore. He had made his marriage proposal. Lady Juliet had accepted it, and the business details of their marriage were being negotiated at that very moment. After that, Alec's courtship ordeal would end.
    "Who will he marry?" Seymour asked, glancing back and forth between Alec and the old woman with a worried expression.
    "The next girl ye meet," she said with an odd glint in her eyes. She held up one finger and added, "She'll 'ave some surprises fer ye, that she will."
    "I am not going to listen to any more of this." Alec pushed past Richard, who was laughing, and jerked open the door. Yet over his shoulder he heard the woman's parting words.
    "Ye'll ne'er be bored again, Yer Grace! Ne'er again."
    Striding across the parquet floor of the foyer, his boots making a series of sharp clicks, Alec pulled off his calfskin gloves with a distinct snap and handed them and his hat to Burke, the majordomo of the club, who in turn handed them to one of the ten footmen waiting to take the patrons' coats to the valet room where it would be dried and cleaned.
    "Good evening, Your Grace," Burke said, helping Alec out of his greatcoat and handing it to the next footman. "And how are you?"
    "He's annoyed," quipped Downe, who shrugged his coat off his injured arm and allowed Burke to remove the other.
    "I see." Burke replied in a tone that said he never saw anything, but said the proper thing anyway because that was his job. He took the other men's garments, according them the same fastidious treatment all the club's aristocratic members received.
    "Somehow I don't think you do," Downe said quietly, trying to follow Alec as he strode with athletic ease up the Florentine marble staircase to the main salon.
    Seymour caught up with Downe. Eyeing Alec's broad back he whispered, "What do you think he's going to do about Lady Juliet?"
    Downe stopped and looked at Seymour as if he had left his mind along with his coat at the club's entrance. "What the devil are you talking about?"
    "The announcement. You know as well as I what a stickler he is for propriety. What's he going to do when the wedding does not take place, especially after his plans have been plastered all over the newspapers?"
    "Don't be more of an ass than you already are."
    "You heard the old woman. She said Belmore wasn't going to marry Juliet. I tell you I've had a bad feeling about that match ever since yesterday when Alec told us the arrangements had been made.
    Something is not right. I can feel it." Seymour paused and tapped his fist against his lean chest. "Right here." He gave Downe a look of pure conviction.
    "You need to stop eating that pickled eel."
    Grumbling, the viscount continued up the stairs, stopping when they reached the rose marble columns at the top. He turned and faced his friend. "I don't give a fig if you believe me or not. You wait and see. Whenever I have this feeling something odd happens."
    "No girl, let alone one as intelligent as Juliet Spencer, is going to let the Duke of Belmore slip through her fingers. Trust me, Seymour, what that old woman said was folly," Downe said as the two men entered the grand salon, where Alec sat at his usual table, a steward at his side watching while he tasted a vintage wine.
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