In the Arms of the Heiress (A LADIES UNLACED NOVEL) Read Free Page A

her staff could keep a watchful eye over him to ensure he kept his appointment tomorrow in a sober state. He looked as if he needed a good meal, too, and Mary’s cook was one of the best in London—even if she’d spent her formative years as a whore.
    She made her second proposition of the morning. Captain Cooper made no objection. Yes, the agency’s motto, “Performing the Impossible Before Breakfast Since 1888,” was on its way to being fulfilled.

Chapter

    3
    Wednesday, December 2, 1903
    T hey were all cracked, talking about him as if he couldn’t hear. It was his eye that was injured, not his ears. Charles was sick to death of being poked and pinned by the bald little Mr. Smythe and his assistants, who had crawled over him like ants at a picnic for over an hour.
    “I say, are we done?” He sounded posh, a regular Harrow boy, if he did say so himself. No one would suspect he’d been raised in George Alexander’s workers’ village. George was a generous employer, a benevolent man. Some might even say that because he stole young Charlie away from his family and civilized him, grown Charles owed him his life.
    Well, his life wasn’t worth much. George had got a poor bargain.
    “Almost, Captain Cooper. You’ve been very patient,” the tailor said.
    He’d been very
bored
. And he was damned thirsty. If he couldn’t have gin, Charles wondered if he could talk the old Evensong biddy into giving him some wine at lunch.
    If they ever ate some. Breakfast was but a distant memory. Good as the meal had been, Charles’s stomach rumbled and the tailor’s assistant gave him a cheeky grin.
    Charles had been lectured at length all morning by Mrs. Evensong as to what his duties and responsibilities would be as Miss Louisa Stratton’s temporary husband. She had even pressed a lavishly illustrated art book in his hand, as this Maximillian fellow—Maximillian!—was supposed to be some sort of expert. As Charles didn’t know a Rembrandt from a Rousseau, he expected he’d have some studying to do.
    It would be just like old times, when, as a scholarship boy, he’d outshone the scions of the best families in England. No one could call Charles stupid, or remain standing very long if they did. He’d been as good with his fists as with his figures.
    School and the army had polished some of his rough edges, but at twenty-seven, there were still a few splinters that poked through. He hoped Miss Stratton wouldn’t be too sorry once she finally met him.
    But really, what did he care? He was to be a well-paid lapdog to a silly society bitch. He could put up with most anything for a month for the exorbitant fee. This Louisa must have several screws loose and way too much money.
    A sheltered little princess like her would have died on the spot if she’d seen what he had in Africa.
    Charles hopped off the box he was standing on and shot his cuffs. He’d worn a uniform for ten years, and he barely recognized his reflection in the triple mirror. The new suit, well, suited him. Mr. Smythe, the tailor, was even going to make him new silk eye patches, which would be a vast improvement over the itchy one he’d been given in the field hospital.
    To look at him without it, you’d never know he’d lost most of his vision. But he’d gotten headaches trying to stare through the blur of broken blood vessels and floating bits. His mates teased him, saying the eye patch gave him a piratical air that would be useful with the ladies. But he hadn’t bothered to find out if they were right.
    Charles had not been able to think of women in a sexual sense after he’d helped bury hundreds of them and their children, their naked bodies blistered by the sun, malnourished, skeletal. Kitchener’s troops had set up a vast network of internment camps to imprison the Boer women, tents springing up like mushrooms in the dry ground. Food and water routinely failed to reach them, the English supply and communication lines to the refugee camps broken by