David Lord of Honor (The Lonely Lords) Read Free Page A

be needing anything else?”
    “I might be needing a room here for tonight, if you don’t mind,” he said, thinking of the pleasures of a London snowstorm and the perfect fit of his riding boots. “Don’t go to any bother. As long as the sheets are clean, I’ll manage.”
    “It won’t be any trouble.” Mrs. Moses curtsied and bustled off. She never moved at less than a full parade bustle, and David had never seen her discommoded. When he turned to face Mrs. Banks, he was surprised to see her expression had become discommoded indeed. “Have I given offense?”
    “If you intend I share that room, you have.” The weather outside was balmy compared to her tone.
    “I do not.” He might speculate, dream, ponder, or fantasize—he was an adult male of means without a current female attachment—but he was not intending anything.
    “Then I apologize,” she said, shoulders slumping. “But I am here with you, alone at a private residence, you know of my profession, I am in your debt, and you spoke of… biding here for the night.”
    “You don’t know me well enough to understand I wouldn’t presume so,” David said. “Perhaps we might consider your misapprehension a reasonable mistake? Would you like to eat in here, or should we repair to the breakfast parlor?”
    “Here. The fire’s already lit.”
    And the room boasted two lovely bay windows, one facing the street, which would allow any passersby to note a woman in distress. A viscount— even a viscount—who owned a brothel eventually appreciated the brutal pragmatism any shopgirl acquired before her twelfth birthday.
    “Shall we sit?” He gestured to a sofa upholstered in a blue brocade that went nicely with Mrs. Banks’s coloring. His guest was turning out to be more than a little prickly, and he made the tactical decision not to seat himself beside her.
    He fell silent while Mrs. Moses brought lunch and the tea tray on a cart, and then went smiling and beaming on her way, as if David entertained pretty, single women every day of the week—which he did not .
    “You are looking at me most oddly, Mrs. Banks, as if you’re surprised to see exactly the meal I’d requested of my housekeeper. Would you be so good as to pour?”
    “Of course,” she said, taking off her gloves and reaching for the pot. “How strong do you like your tea?”
    “Just short of bitter. And most people stare at me, until they figure out that the problem with my countenance is that I have one blue eye and one green eye. Then they invariably don’t know where to look.”
    “But your eyes are beautiful,” Mrs. Banks remonstrated, sitting back without lifting the teapot. As soon as the words left her lips, she looked away, and now— of all things —a blush suffused her cheeks. “I do apologize, my lord, for making such a personal observation.”
    A blushing courtesan was not something even the owner of a brothel saw every day, and the sight was… charming, but also somehow discordant. Intriguing in ways that made a man, a gentleman , inconveniently curious.
    “One doesn’t apologize for a sincere compliment, Mrs. Banks.” David’s younger sister had paid him a similar compliment once, and Astrid Alexander was a stranger to flattery. “Our tea should be adequately steeped by now.”
    “As you wish.” She poured and fixed his tea with cream and sugar, then passed him his cup, her hand still evidencing a minute tremor. The physician in David noted it, as did the man, and neither one was pleased.
    “I’ve traveled a great deal,” David said, “but I’ve found nothing anywhere to rival the simple pleasure and comfort of a cup of strong tea. When one is poor, such comforts are dear indeed.”
    “You consider yourself impoverished?” Mrs. Banks asked as she prepared her tea.
    Before he answered, David paused to close his eyes and take his first sip of strong, sweet, nearly scalding tea, for bliss in any form was to be savored.
    “As a child, I lived with my mother