Lady Caro Read Free

dangled after you has been able to capture your heart. I must say that your taste in women, whether flirts or convenients, is dazzling.”
    Shocked, Ashley exclaimed, “I thought you had no inkling of my ladybirds.”
    “Of course I knew of them,” Bourn said impatiently. “Everything involving you is of great concern to me.”
    “Why?” Ashley asked bitterly. “Afraid I’ll disgrace the family?”
    “Not at all.” Again the earl rubbed his hand wearily over his eyes. When he spoke, there was a plaintive note in his voice that Ashley had never heard before. “Your mama misses you dreadfully. It would give her so much pleasure if you would visit us at Winton more frequently.”
    Ashley seldom went there because he was uncertain of how welcome he was to his father. “And you, Papa,” he asked, determined to know the truth, “would you like me to visit?”
    “What a corkbrained question! I should like nothing better!” The earl’s voice was thick with emotion. The list of names fell unnoticed from his left hand. “May God and poor William forgive me, but you always were my favorite. So like your dear mama.”
    “ What ?” This emotional confession from his usually impassive father stunned the viscount.
    “Of course, I tried very hard to hide it, especially when William was alive. It is quite unworthy for a man to have favorites among his children.”
    “Oh, Papa!” Ashley exclaimed in a choked voice. All those years when he had thought ... He bent over hastily, fumbling with the paper that his father had dropped in order to cover the emotion that overcame him. When he looked up, his green eyes were very bright indeed. So were the earl’s.
    His father’s passionate confession had a singular effect on Ashley. In that moment he would have tried to fly to the moon if the earl had asked it of him. He turned his attention to his father’s list of prospective brides with the air of a man who knows his duty and is determined to do it.
    Bourn said anxiously, “All the marriages this past year sadly decimated the ranks of desirable young ladies, but all seven are of excellent breeding. And that snake Henry cannot be permitted to succeed to what I, and my father and grandfather before me, spent our lives building.” Vinson had to agree that if his father’s suspicions of Henry were true, it was unthinkable that he should do so. Even if they were not, such a loose screw as Henry was not a fit successor to the long line of distinguished men who had held the title.
    Despite, or, perhaps more accurately, because of, his determination to honor his father’s wish that he marry, Ashley contemplated the list with dismay. He knew six of the seven young ladies, and his father was right. It was a very poor year to be bride picking.
    Lady Margaret White, who headed the list, was exquisitely lovely—and exquisitely boring.
    Grace and Jane Kelsie, daughters of the marquess of Levisham’s late younger brother, were also acknowledged beauties who had made a joint London come-out last season. They had been very forward in signaling their interest in Ashley, but they had both struck him as tiresome creatures who hid an ill-tempered nature behind a sugared manner. He suspected that once married they would display an alarming tendency to become as shrewish and domineering as their overbearing mama.
    Elizabeth Trott, at twenty-five the oldest on the earl’s list, had been the Incomparable of her first London season. She had kept hordes of suitors dangling, preferring the adulation of many men to the wedding ring of one. But that had been seven years ago. Now she had grown plump and faded, trying to conceal beneath a liberal application of paint and powder that she was no longer a beauty. Her many admirers had vanished with her beauty, but even at the height of her popularity Ashley had not been one of them.
    Mary Milbank was of superior breeding and fortune but far below the others in beauty and missish in the bargain.
    Of the