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

in a small town in Scotland. Our circumstances were humble, and the winters long and cold. My mother loved me, and I never understood how poor we were, because it was all I’d known.”
    “But your mother understood,” Mrs. Banks guessed—accurately. “May I fix you a plate, my lord?” She might have been the hostess at some village at home, so correct were her manners.
    “At least one.” For David grew hungrier by the moment, also more desperate to provide the woman a decent meal.
    As she arranged bread, cheddar, ham, and sliced apples on a plate, David discreetly studied his guest. Her dark hair and dark eyes were not pretty, not in the blond, blue-eyed Teutonic sense most Englishmen would be drawn to. She was not charmingly petite, not overtly flirtatious. She was, all in all, an unlikely choice as a courtesan—the best ones were—but even as he drew that conclusion, David had to admit the woman was… restful, like his sister Felicity was restful, even in the presence of her decidedly unrestful spouse.
    Letty Banks moved with graceful, economical motions; she was comfortable with silence; she had good instincts.
    And Thomas Jennings’s hunch had been accurate: Letty Banks was in serious trouble, too.
    ***
     
    A man seeking to buy a woman’s favors always bore a bit of calculation in his eyes. Sometimes the calculation was friendly. Sometimes the coin he offered was a promise, a ring, pretty words, soft caresses, or a bit of cash. More often, he didn’t try to disguise his objective or his contempt for a woman who’d grant it.
    Letty had become so cold, so hungry, she’d nearly stopped seeing the calculation and the contempt, and yet, in David Worthington’s eyes she found… neither. Not for her, and not for himself .
    “Thank you.” He accepted the plate, letting his fingers brush hers, a fleeting warmth any woman of sense would disregard. “And you must join me, Mrs. Banks, else I shall feel like a glutton.”
    The tray bore a veritable feast by Letty’s standards, and yet, she was already in his lordship’s debt.
    “I insist, Mrs. Banks,” her host said gently. “You will hurt Mrs. Moses’s feelings if you refuse her offering. She’s quite sensitive.”
    Letty knew housekeepers, and had she gone ’round to Mrs. Moses’s back door, she would have met with the domestic equivalent of a full-grown, well-fed bulldog, intent on guarding the master’s last bucket of scraps.
    “I am hungry.” Famished, halfway to starving, if the fit of her dresses was any indication. One shouldn’t lie, not to others and not to oneself.
    Lord Fairly picked up a plate, and as she had for him, arranged a generous portion of ham, cheese, pale bread—crusts sliced off—and crisp apple slices on it. She accepted the food with a silent prayer of gratitude, making sure this time their fingers did not brush. By sheer discipline, Letty did not use both hands to cram the food in her mouth.
    “I do not think Mrs. Moses’s feelings could be so hurt she’d hold it against you for long, my lord. Given your charm, she’d sooner apologize for overloading the tray.”
    He looked pleased. “You accuse me of charm? My sisters say otherwise. They say I am entirely too dour and withdrawn, and because I don’t go about in Society much, they might have a point.”
    Men did not mention their sisters to Letty Banks, though this man apparently did.
    “Perhaps you are shy.” She bit into an apple first, an apple that had been carefully stored in a cold cellar and still had most of its sweet crispness and only a hint of earth about its flavor.
    “I’m not shy, exactly.” Though his lordship’s expression came close to bashful. “I enjoy people well enough, or some people, but I also need my solitude.”
    Letty made herself pause in her eating, a bite of cheese in hand. “Were you in my profession, you would have plenty of solitude.” She ought not to have said that, but hunger was making her light-headed and more