My Lord Wicked (Historical Regency Romance) Read Free

moors and loneliness of the bleak, rocky terrain of North Yorkshire she felt a deep connection, a feeling that she had been there before though she knew with certainty she had not.
    She felt as if she had climbed the smoothly rounded barren hills that led to nowhere, had tossed stones into the rock streams that rushed between graphite crevices, had touched the fuzzy stems of silvery thistle that spiked along the bleached grasses. She could not understand the profound feelings that swamped her: the feeling that here in the rugged land which bore little stamp of man she had found her home.
    The next stop would be Morton, the closest village to Lord Stacks' Marshbanks Abbey. That realization created the same thumping in her thoracic cavity as the waning heartbeat of one of Papa’s patients.
    Would her guardian meet her himself? Or would he send one of his servants?
    Lord Stacks had been all that was amiable in his reply to her letter that begged a visit to the abbey. She could stay at Marshbanks Abbey for as long as she wanted, he had said, and he had sent her more than enough money to meet her needs throughout the journey.
    She hated being dependent on Lord Stacks, but she had no choice. Her pride’s only consolation was the determination that she would find some way to repay her guardian’s kindness.
    Her fondest wish was that Lord Stacks bring her into fashion. Not the same kind of fashion well-born beauties like her cousin Roxanne. Never that. But with a modicum of effort, Freddie might be put forward, might be in a position to meet a man with whom she would be pleased to share her life. She would never expect her prospective husband to be rich or handsome, but she did want to enjoy being with him, to care for him and — God willing — the children, her children, who would so enrich her life.
    How she wished for a babe of her own, a real person who loved her by the sheer virtue of its birth. What would it be like to be loved, she wondered wistfully. In all her life only one earthly being had ever truly loved her. Champs had lived for her touch, for her kindly murmurs of affection. Now, she had lost him, too. Aunt Dorothea had forced her to leave the dog behind in Chelseymeade.
    Would that a man could care for her with Champs’ fidelity. She longed to care for someone — a real human being — so greatly that it gave pain.
    Beneath gray skies, a profusion of gray stone buildings and gray stone streets marked the entrance to Morton. Her stomach gave an odd flip. She sat up straight, smoothing back the hair she always wore in an effortless bun. A pity nothing could be done about her dress that was now hopelessly wrinkled. The black serge pelisse she would wear over it was equally as unattractive. And both were shabby. Whatever would Lord Stacks think of her?
    She was not to find out immediately. For when she disembarked from the coach, no one seemed to be waiting for her. There was one well-dressed gentleman who eyed the two passengers who got off at Morton, but he made no attempt to introduce himself to her or to the bearded man who had ridden in the cheap seats on top the coach.
    Though the gentleman appeared to be Quality, he could not be Lord Stacks for he appeared younger than her father's eight and thirty years. He was tall like her father, but did not have the thickened waist and sagging chin her father and other men of his age possessed. Neither gray nor thinning were evident in his full head of black hair.
    She turned away from the gentleman. She would have to hire a ride to Marshbanks Abbey. While deciding how to go about the daunting task of hiring a conveyance, she heard the gentleman query the coachman.
    "Did you not give transport to a young gentleman of seventeen or eighteen? Name of Freddie Lambeth."
     
     

 
    Chapter 2
     
    A cool wind pierced through Freddie's threadbare pelisse, chilling the very blood in her veins as she stood incredulous in front of the inn at Morton, staring at the gentleman.