Devil Takes A Bride Read Free Page B

himself to face his parents’ displeasure.
    When the door opened, however, Dev furrowed his brow, for it wasn’t Lord and Lady Strathmore, but the dean and the school chaplain, both old buzzards looking grim as death.
    â€œHave a seat, son,” the dean murmured with unprecedented kindness.
    Dev obeyed, but glanced through the open door into the hallway and furrowed his brow. “Have they come?”
    The chaplain winced and sat down slowly with him. “My dear boy, we’ve sent for your aunt Augusta to come and collect you. I’m afraid there has been some terrible news….”

C HAPTER
O NE
London, 1817
    The fanciful cupola-topped pavilion languished in desolation on the frozen marshes south of the Thames, a gaudy ruin, with a gray February sleet blowing against its rusty, fake turrets and boarded-up windows. Some said the place was haunted. Others claimed it was cursed. All that His Lordship’s unassuming little man-of-business knew, however, was that if his glamorous patron did not soon arrive, he was sure to catch his death in this weather.
    Clutching his umbrella over his head, Charles Beecham, Esquire, stood wrapped in his brown wool greatcoat, his beaver hat pulled low over his receding hairline, and a look of abject misery on his face. He sneezed abruptly into his handkerchief.
    â€œGod bless ye.” Mr. Dalloway, standing nearby, slid him a greasy grin.
    â€œThank you,” Charles clipped out before turning away from the unkempt property agent with a respectable
humph
.
    Dalloway was the opposition in this matter, determined to bilk His Lordship out of three thousand pounds for the dubious privilege of owning the godforsaken place. Charles meant to advise his patron against the purchase in the strongest possible terms, not the least because it would fall to
him
to explain the mad expenditure to old Lady Ironsides. Stealing another discreet glance at his fob watch, he pursed his lips.
Late.
    Alas, his staid life as the Strathmore family’s solicitor had become alarmingly interesting since His Lordship’s return from his high adventures on the seven seas and elsewhere.
    Though barely thirty, the viscount had done the sorts of things Charles preferred to read about from the safety of his favorite armchair. Her Ladyship had oft regaled Charles with tales of her dashing nephew’s exploits: battling pirates, chasing down slave ships, living with savages, fending off mountain lions, surveying temples in the wilds of Malaysia, crossing deserts with the nomad caravans of Kandahar. Charles had thought them a lot of cock-and-bull tales until he’d met the man. What on earth could he want with this place? he wondered, then rehearsed a diplomatic warning in his head:
This, my lord, is precisely the sort of rash adventure that drove your uncle into dun territory….
    Ah, but thinking a thing and saying it to Devil Strathmore were two different matters entirely.
    Just then, a drumming sound approached from behind the wintry shroud of pewter fog and needling rain, like thunder rumbling in the distance. Barely discernible at first, it swiftly formed into the deep, recognizable rhythm of pounding hoofbeats.
    At last.
Charles stared in the direction of the pleasure grounds’ great iron gates. The ominous cadence grew louder—driving, relentless—reverberating across the marshes, until it shook the earth. Suddenly, a large black coach hurtled out of the indistinguishable gray, barreling up the graveled drive that offered the only safe course through the boggy waste.
    The quartet of fine, jet-black horses moved like liquid night, their hooves striking sure over the mud and ice, steam puffing from their nostrils. Stationed fore and aft on the shiny body of the coach, His Lordship’s driver, groom, and two footmen stared straight ahead, impervious to the weather. They were clad in traditional Strathmore livery, a sedate dun color with smart black piping, stiff