Margo Maguire Read Free

ride the distance to Runthwait, only to return and find his mistress gone.
    Once Alfred had left, Gavin focused on his goal: to get Christina to her grandfather at Windermere Park and collect his money.
    “I have no grandfather, Captain Briggs,” Christina said stiffly as she took a length of white linen from a shelf.
    “On the contrary, you do.”
    “Take off your coat.” She said it as though she had not heard him.
    He complied, removing his greatcoat as well as his jacket. Both bore holes from the lead ball that had grazed through the flesh of his upper arm. It stung, and was bleeding profusely, but he’d suffered far worse during his years of service to the crown.
    “Your wound needs to be stitched.”
    “This is hardly a wound, Lady Fairhaven. You barely grazed me.”
    She appeared dubious, but he had far more important business here. The lead ball had passed across his skin—was not lodged in his flesh—so there was nothing more to do than bandage it and control the bleeding. He’d have a nice scar for his trouble, though. To go along with a few others he’d collected over the years.
    Maybe he ought to charge old Windermere a few hundred pounds more for his trouble. Get something more useful than a medal this time.
    “Your grandfather is the Duke of Windermere,” he said.
    She stopped cold, speechless for the moment. Gavin took the thick roll of linen from her hand and pressed a wad of it to the bloody site. He had to admit it was bleeding fairly freely, but experience told him it would soon stop. “The old duke disowned your mother, Sarah, when she married a London barrister—a man called Daniel Hayes.”
    A small crease appeared between her delicate, dark brows. “Nonsense. I-I was an orphan when my parents took me in.”
    “True. You were an orphan.” He might have taken a kinder tone if only she had not been so stiff and unyielding. “Your real parents drowned in a boating accident on the Thames in 1796. You were three years old at the time. But even after the demise of your parents, your grandfather was unrelenting in his denial of you and your sister. He sent you both away to be fostered out of his sight and awareness.”
    Her astonished eyes flew up to meet his. “My sister! My sister? ”
    Gavin felt rather brutal, in spite of himself. “Aye. You have a sister. Her name is Lily.”

Chapter 2
    F ortunately, there was a chair behind Christina when she sat down hard. A sister.
    She had never imagined . . . and yet it felt quite right. The name Lily struck a chord deep within her and she knew Captain Briggs was speaking the truth. But a grandfather who’d disowned her?
    She felt a sharp pang unlike anything she’d ever known. All these years she’d had no family but the Jamesons—they were her parents and younger brothers. They’d taken her in when she’d had no one, loved and nurtured her as though she were their own. They were all she’d ever needed. And when she’d grown, her father had seen to it that she made a favorable match in marrying Edward. She’d known who she was.
    “Your mother had a brother,” Captain Briggs said. “He was the duke’s heir, but he perished last year during a typhus outbreak.”
    Christina had a fleeting memory of a little girl with black hair like her own. They’d hugged and played under the watchful eye of . . . someone. She could not remember who’d been watching, but she could feel the warmth of a loving gaze, and hear a woman’s soft laughter.
    Her mother. Not Lady Sunderland, but . . . Sarah. The daughter of a duke.
    Christina felt her chin begin to quiver and she turned away from Captain Briggs to gaze out the small window in the servants’ pantry. The backs of her eyes burned.
    “Why does this grandfather want me now?” She tried to collect herself and think. “I . . . I cannot inherit, so what is the point?” Why should her life be any more disrupted than it was?
    “There is more to be said about that, Lady Fairhaven. But let