Dark Fires Read Free Page A

courtyard and stalked into the house, past the butler. “Show them in,” he said through gritted teeth.
    “Which room shall I show them to, my lord?” Thomas asked politely. He was in his fifties, white-haired, balding, his face always bland. The earl thought that he could run around in a loincloth and moccasins with full Comanche warpaint and the old man wouldn’t bat an eye. Nick actually, secretly, liked him.
    “How the hell would I know? You can take them to the stables for all I care.” The earl strode across the marbled foyer, oblivious to the fact that he was tracking mud and manure through. He began bounding up the curved mahogany stairs.
    “Shall I serve them tea and crumpets?” Thomas called after him politely.
    “Serve them spitted catfish heads,” he said with a growl.
    “Yes, sir,” Thomas said.
    The earl paused on the first landing, his hand turning white on the banister. His cold glance locked with Thomas’s bland one. He almost smiled. At least Thomas knew when to take him literally, unlike his wife’s man. That imbecile had actually served the closest thing he could find to catfish once upon a time, when the earl had been forced to host friends of Patricia’s in her absence. It was hard to say who had been more shocked, his guests or Nick, at the sight of the spitted, grilled fishheads served with the tea. Nick had actually laughed once he recovered. His wife, Patricia, had not found the episode the least bit amusing.
    The earl stomped into the master suite. There was no valet there awaiting him; he did not have one. That had caused another, albeit minor, scandal, not that the earl cared. Until his wife’s death four years past he had suffered with a valet, which he found ridiculous. He was a grown man and he was capable of dressing himself. The lack of privacy bothered him as much as the inanity of it, and after the trial he had dismissed the valet immediately. He would have discharged two-thirds of the household staff as well, except that he worried about turning them out of their jobs. The earl was well aware that most agricultural laborers, when unemployed, moved to the towns, where there were jobs aplenty in the factories. He did not have the heart to consign these people, whom he knew, to such a cold, dismal fate. Born and raised on a west Texas ranch, for Nick such an existence was hell on earth.
    His shirt was wet with sweat, and the earl removed it, flinging it to the floor. He had been working with the laborers building a new stone wall in one of the south meadows. He had enjoyed the task—gathering the rocks from the fields and adding them to the growing wall. Unlike some of his neighbors, whose acreage was going from corn to grass without grazing livestock, the earl was increasing the use of land on all fronts. The new meadow would be turned to hay to feed his increasing herds. He was aware that agriculture was in a precarious state—he sensed the beginning of its decline. He knew he must be careful, yet Dragmore, under his efficient policies, was thriving. Nick understood that to compete with the vastly cheaper American agriculture, he would have to increase Dragmore’s efficiency. It was a challenge, a task he threw his entire heart into, one that kept him going from dawn until dusk.
    They were waiting.
    The earl grimly buttoned a fresh shirt. He could not put it off. They were waiting. Not for the first time, he regretted the day he had ever married Patricia Weston.
    She heard him coming.
    Jane took a breath. The wait had been unbearable. And very rude too. She had seen him turn his back on their carriage as they entered the drive. He hadn’t even remained to greet them as a host should. Now they had sat in the yellow parlor for a good half hour, and there was still no noble presence. Jane had scanned her environs out of sheer boredom and the need to occupy herself. She had instantly noted that the parlor appeared to not have been used in a long time—or cleaned, for that