Captured by a Gentleman (Regency Unlaced 6) Read Free

Ranulf informed her coldly. “As quickly as a carriage can be arranged to carry you there.”
    He may have been played the fool once by Millicent. He was not about to be so again by her cousin.
    Certainly not by the tears now trickling prettily down Miss Darcy Ambridge’s pale cheeks. Crocodile tears, Ranulf dismissed, of the kind Millicent had used to cry when she wished to get her own way over a new bonnet or gown.
    He had not been deeply in love with Millicent, or she him, but they had seemed to like each other well enough for marriage. Ranulf had believed a deeper affection might grow between them and that their marriage would be a long and contented one.
    At the time, Ranulf had political ambitions, and Millicent was the daughter of a powerful member of the government. While London would not have been Ranulf’s first choice of residence, he had been willing to spend at least half a year there, pleasing his wife while at the same time pursuing a political career.
    While he had been making enquiries regarding buying a suitable house for them in London and organizing his political plans accordingly, Millicent had been throwing up her skirts and parting her legs for the man who was not only her lover but also the coconspirator in disposing of Ranulf’s cousin.
    Whatever this young woman, Millicent’s cousin, was now up to, Ranulf was very much on his guard against it.
    “No. Please,” Darcy choked, mortified at how desperate she sounded but quite unable to stop herself from begging. “I cannot go back there. I-I cannot.” She began to cry in earnest.
    “Whatever foolishness you have become embroiled in cannot be solved by running away,” Ranulf informed her icily. “You must go back and confess all to your parents. I am sure they will not condemn you out of—”
    “My parents are both dead,” Darcy informed him dully. “They were killed in the same carriage accident which took my Aunt Sugdon, who was my mother’s sister.”
    Ranulf was aware his former mother-in-law, a woman whom he had pitied for her choice of husband, had perished four months ago, her carriage having overturned during the worst of the winter weather. He had not realized there had been others in the carriage with her. Darcy Ambridge’s parents, if she was to be believed. Which explained why she was currently shrouded from head to toe in black.
    But not the reason she had been caught hiding in his town carriage.
    “I am sorry for that,” he dismissed brusquely. “But you must have a guardian—”
    “My Uncle Sugdon.”
    Ranulf frowned. His former father-in-law was not one of his favorite people. “Lord Sugdon is your closest relative?”
    She nodded. “It would appear so, yes. Although I did not really know him until recently. My father did not care for my aunt’s husband. Since the death of my parents and Aunt Sugdon, I have resided at Lord Sugdon’s home with him.”
    There was something in the way she spoke…
    Some hint of… Of what, Ranulf was unsure.
    He only knew it was there. Beneath the surface. Unspoken, but lurking malevolently nonetheless.
    Ranulf recalled Millicent had been slightly in awe, even a little afraid of her politically powerful father. Her last words before she rode to her death had been to beseech Ranulf not to send her back to her father. She had claimed it was because he would beat her for shaming him and their family, before having her locked away in an asylum for the rest of her life.
    Ranulf looked searchingly at the young woman standing before him. Lord Cecil Sugdon’s niece by marriage. Now his ward. He could not help but wonder if Sugdon had threatened and beaten her too?
    Had he frightened her enough that she had secreted herself away in Ranulf’s carriage?
    Or was it possible Sugdon had a hand in her being here? If so, Ranulf could think of only one reason why the older man would have done such a thing. Sugdon, knowing Ranulf now had a vast fortune, had been embarrassingly ingratiating when