If He's Noble (Wherlocke Book 7) (Paranormal Historical Romance) Read Free

desperate. Every instinct he depended upon was telling him that she was in trouble and he needed all the information he could get from her if he was to protect her adequately. It surprised him a little when he realized just how determined he was to do that.
     
     
    Primrose finished brushing the travel dust from her gown, hung it up, and dug a clean one out of her bag. She pushed aside a pang of disappointment over the fact that she had brought only a few serviceable gowns. The strange urge to look nice for Sir Bened was unexpected. She was not even sure she could trust him. He could be the chivalrous man she had called him but she no longer so readily believed such people exist. Recent events had shown her that her judgment of people was not as sound as she had once believed.
    She had certainly misjudged her aunt and uncle. When her father had generously allowed them to move into the dower house when her uncle had lost his money through bad investments, she had soon deemed them both to be foolish, rude, and somewhat mean-spirited. Having had as little as possible to do with them from then on, she had not altered her opinion of them by much. Then her father had died and her aunt and uncle had moved into the manor to, as they told anyone who would listen, care for young Primrose until her errant brother returned. She had quickly decided that her aunt was still rude and mean-spirited but that the woman’s foolishness was mostly an act. Augusta was cunning, coldhearted, and dangerous. Although she had no proof of it, Primrose was certain Augusta had killed her father.
    The pain of that loss struck her hard and Primrose nearly collapsed beneath the smothering waves of grief roiling inside her. Her father had been six and fifty years of age when he had suffered his fatal heart seizure. It was not something that should should have raised any questions. Then her brother had not returned home, not even for the burial, and Primrose had begun to grow suspicious. The air of contentment, even smug victory, Aunt Augusta had assumed grew more noticeable as the woman took over more and more of the running of the manor. She had pushed aside all Primrose’s attempts to become the lady of the manor as was her right, and not always with tact or even subtlety. It was all just another good reason to find Simeon as soon as possible.
    She had hesitated even then for she had been afraid of setting out on her own. It had quickly become clear that she had no one she could really trust, no one who could go against Augusta anyway. Only her father’s man of business could still be trusted but she knew he would have done all he could to stop her. Every other person with any power who had been close to her father or worked with him had fallen away over the last year. That had been strange but she had always assumed it had just been because they had all been getting older and traveled less. Now she began to think her aunt had been slowly but surely isolating them. Why the woman would do such a thing was the question, and none of the answers Primrose came up with were good ones.
    Shaking off her grief and pulling free of her meandering thoughts, Primrose quickly braided her hair and secured it with a ribbon. Bened had said he would get them a meal and a private parlor and she had already left him waiting on her for too long. Her stomach rumbled to remind her of how long it had been since she had eaten so she hurried out of the room.
    With every step she took, Primrose plotted out what she would say to the man. She needed to thank him for his help and then send him on his way without offering any offense. The man had been all that was kind, assisting her when she needed it and clearly prepared to keep doing so. It was tempting to let him continue as she had no wish to keep traveling around alone searching for her brother, an adventure fraught with danger. She would not drag Sir Bened into the middle of it and put him in danger as well. There was also the