Damsel in Disguise Read Free

Lindley said after they’d walked in silence quite a while, the horses plodding nervously along behind them.
    He hated to imagine. “No. What?”
    “There’ll likely be women at this posting house.”
    “Probably so.”
    “That suits me just fine. With luck, there’ll be a couple for both of us. Which do you prefer, the blonds or the brunettes?”
    “The ones who do their job and disappear before daylight.”
    “I reckon that’ll be all of them,” Lindley declared with a hopeful laugh. “I think I’d favor a blond tonight. Unless of course there’s only one available, and blond is your preference, then naturally I would—”
    “No, thank you. Have any woman you want. I think I’ll just sleep tonight.”
    “What? But you’ve been stuck up there at Hartwood for nearly two months, and I saw the sort of guests they had—not exactly fresh and accommodating, as they say. Surely now that you’re getting out and about again, you’d want to prime the old pump handle, if you know what I mean.”
    “I know what you mean, damn it,” Rastmoor grumbled. “But I’m not interested, all right? Good luck to you and your pump handle, but I’d rather sleep. Alone.”
    Lindley frowned as if that was a foreign concept. “Alone? But you’re not ill, are you?”
    “No. I’m fine.”
    “You don’t sound fine. You sound—blue deviled. My God, but you can’t possibly still be pining after that girl? That little French actress of yours—St. Clem, or something, wasn’t it?”
    “St. Clement,” Rastmoor corrected before he caught himself. The last thing in the world he wanted was to discuss Julia right now. “And I’m not pining. I’m just not interested in some dirty whore at a posting house, all right?”
    Lindley gave a slow whistle. “You are still pining! Dash it all, Rastmoor, that was years ago. And didn’t she end up marrying your cousin or something?”
    “Yes.”
    By God, what would it take to not have this conversation? Was he going to have to use that pistol on Lindley?
    “That’s right, and then she died in childbed, didn’t she?” Lindley went on.
    Rastmoor gritted his teeth. “That’s what I heard.”
    Oh, he’d heard the story, all right. Then he’d gone and gotten roaring drunk. Dashford’s father had taken ill and died some short time thereafter, and the two of them were roaring drunk together. Things hadn’t gone so well for them after that, as he recalled.
    Eventually, Dashford pulled himself together, and Rastmoor had simply learned to pretend. He supposed, in a way, it had been easier for Dash. He’d been mourning a devoted father, a man who left behind fond memories and warm emotions. Rastmoor, however, had been grieving something altogether different.
    When Julia St. Clement died, all she left behind were bitter wounds and heartbreak. It was hard enough knowing she’d left him for another man, but with time he might have recovered. It cut deeper than that, though. Julia left him a scar that would never go away. The whore may have died in Fitzgelder’s bed, but the child she’d taken to the grave with her had been Rastmoor’s. She’d carried his child and still left him for another, passing the child off as Fitzgelder’s.
    How did a man ever recover from that?
     
     
    “I CAN’T WAIT TO SEE THIS LORD RASTMOOR’S FACE when he meets you again,” Sophie was saying as they finished their supper.
    Julia cringed. “Hopefully that will never happen. With luck, we’ll find he’s safely at Lord Dashford’s home, and I can simply send a warning message. He’ll find out what Fitzgelder is about, and you and I can be off to meet Papa.”
    “You don’t want to see him again?”
    “Heavens no!”
    “We’ve come all this way, and you’re not even going to see the man?”
    “Exactly.”
    Sophie was downcast. “That’s so sad. I was hoping the two of you might . . .”
    “Sorry, Sophie. That only happens in novels.”
    It was a shame to disappoint the poor girl, but