Love With the Proper Husband Read Free Page A

always existed. I always knew he was there . And he did treat me kindly if without extreme affection. I had no reason to think he didn’t have some feeling for me, and I cared for him as well. I did not realize how much until he was gone. I was quite distressed by his passing.
    “In addition, I was about to be tossed out of my home. I was, in your nephew’s words, a penniless orphan with no prospects and no future save throwing myself on the mercy and generosity of a heretofore unknown cousin.”
    She stopped and met his gaze. “I had long ago determined that in this world, the only one you can truly count on is yourself. My parents were both dead, my sister long since gone; there was nothing to keep me at Townsend Park. You can scarcely blame me for leaving.” She stepped closer. “Every day of my life I was all too aware that should my father die when I was not yet wed, I would have nothing and no one to depend on but myself. And that, Mr. Whiting, is precisely what I did.”
    “And made it damnably hard to find you in the process,” Whiting snapped. “I tried, Lord knows how hard I tried. It took months to track you from Townsend Park to that blasted Frenchwoman’s house here in London—” He narrowed his eyes. “How did you manage that, penniless orphan that you were?”
    “I had some resources,” she said loftily. She had, for years, saved whatever spare money had come her way.
    He snorted. “No doubt. By the time I found your Madames Freneau and de Chabot—and I should at some point like a detailed accounting as to precisely how you know a woman of her dubious reputation—”
    “Mr. Whiting, Madame de Chabot is Madame Freneau’s sister-in-law. Madame Freneau was my teacher and remains my dearest friend. And both ladies have been exceedingly kind to me.” Given Mr. Whiting’s obvious disapproval of Madame de Chabot, it was scarcely necessary to mention Gwen had been staying with the women since her return to London two days ago. The man had control of her finances after all. Still…“Furthermore I do not owe an accounting to anyone, least of all you. I am not some errant child straight from the schoolroom—”
    “Aha!” He glared. “But that was precisely what you were at your father’s death. You were barely sixteen years of age, and I was named your guardian as well as executor of his estate. And, I should point out, the administrator of your income until such time as you marry.”
    “I have no need of a guardian now. I am of age.”
    “Nonetheless, I am still in control of your income and shall remain so until the day you wed or the day I die. Now.” He leaned forward in a distinctly menacing manner. “Sit down, Miss Townsend.”
    She started to protest, then thought better of it and sat.
    “By the time I managed to discover where you had resided in London, you had fled to America.”
    His eyes narrowed. “Imagine my surprise to discover I was no longer trying to find the sixteen-year-old daughter of a British lord but a twenty-year-old governess. A Miss”—he glanced at the papers before him—“no—a Mademoiselle…Fromage. Fromage?” He raised a brow. “Cheese?”
    “Don’t be absurd,” she muttered. “It was Froumage.”
    “I see. Regardless, you did indeed manage to stay one step ahead of my efforts to locate you.”
    Again he glanced at the papers. “Your first position, in Philadelphia, lasted no more than a few months. Following that, you accepted a new position in Boston, again your employment was brief, as were your subsequent positions in Baltimore, Trenton, Philadelphia again, until your most recent in New York, where at long last, you stayed in one place long enough for my agents to catch up to you.” He glared. “It would have been far easier had you not continuously changed your name. The last one was…what?”
    “Piccard,” she murmured.
    “I’m assuming this was to avoid bad references?”
    She sighed in irritation and gazed innocently at nothing in