Heartless Read Free Page B

or fair, tall or short. He hadn’t the slightest notion about her appearance, and yet, through her letters, he felt he knew her better than anyone he had ever met.
    He wasn’t sure what he would do about her, now that her education was complete, but the girl was an innocent, someone his father had taken unfair advantage of, and he felt responsible for her in some way. She had no family, no one to see to her needs. Whatever decision he made, he wouldn’t do as his father had done to him and abandon her.
    Reaching out, he picked up the white-plumed pen on his desk, dipped it into the inkwell, and scratched out the first words he had ever written to her, instructions for her to follow when she departed the school.
    He would send the Greville carriage to transport her to his house in London. He had business to attend to in Liverpool that could last as long as several weeks, but upon his return they would discuss the future. He signed it simply: “Regards, the Earl of Greville.”
    It occurred to him that it was scarcely proper for a young woman to be living in the residence of an unmarried male, but he cared nothing for the rules of convention and he wasn’t about to put himself out any more than he already had. He would supply her with a lady’s maid, one who knew, along with his other servants, the wrath they would suffer if they were anything less than discreet.
    Justin reread the letter he had written, used a drop of wax to close it, and imprinted it with the Greville seal, the image of a hawk swooping down on a hare. He rang for a footman, who came on the run, gave him tuppence, and instructed him to post the letter.
    *   *   *
    Ariel left the bedchamber she had been given in the Earl of Greville’s town mansion and hurried down the wide stone staircase. She had been living in the city for nearly two weeks, each day since her arrival more exciting than the next. She was in London! London! There was a time she never would have believed it.
    It was still hard to accept the changes that had taken place in her life in four short years. She had a thorough education, could read both Latin and French, and speak as well as any member of the nobility. She dressed in fashionable clothes and traveled about in Lord Greville’s expensive black carriage, though in truth, she hadn’t yet ventured far. Of course, the house was nothing at all as she had imagined, nothing like the earl’s magnificent country estate, Greville Hall.
    Instead it was dank and dreary, built of thick gray stone and heavy timbered wood, a massive structure at least 200 years old, with smoke-blackened rafters and not enough windows. No wonder the earl had spent so much time in the country!
    Still, she was in London, on the road to fulfilling her dreams. And though, deep down, there were times she still felt like the ragged cottager’s daughter she truly was, there was no place on earth she would rather be.
    Dressed in an apricot muslin day dress sprigged with white roses, a narrow frilled underskirt, showing merrily beneath the hem, she tucked a strand of pale blond hair into the ringlets swept up on her head and walked through the door of the Red Room.
    She grinned when she saw her best friend, Kassandra Wentworth, seated on a burgundy velvet sofa. “You came! Oh, Kitt, I wasn’t sure you would.” Her friend stood up, and the two girls hugged.
    â€œYou really didn’t think I would come? Don’t be silly—I could hardly wait to see you. It took a bit of doing, I’ll admit. My stepmother would scarcely approve of my visiting you in the home of an unmarried man.”
    â€œI suppose not.”
    â€œYour note said the earl hadn’t yet returned from his business trip.”
    â€œNot yet.”
    â€œWhat will you do when he does?”
    Ariel worried her bottom lip and sank down on the edge of the sofa. “Talk to him. Try to make him understand. I realize he has