My Lord Wicked (Historical Regency Romance) Read Free Page A

Finally, she clamped shut her mouth and approached him. Her chest tightened, and she was not sure she could summon her voice. "Pardon, but would you be Lord Stacks?"
    He spun around to face her, his eyes taking in the shabby clothes she wore. His face was burnished by the sun she had been told never shone here in the North Country. He was not classically handsome but most pleasant to look at. "I am."
    "I, sir, am Freddie Lambeth," she said as she curtsied.
    His mouth dropped open, then shut, all expression erased from his angular face. He glanced down at the tattered bag she carried. "May I carry your valise?"
    She handed over the bag that held all she possessed.
    "Please follow me to the chaise."
    Four matched bays stood ceremonially in front of a glistening gilt-trimmed black carriage. His lordship handed her up into the most plush interior she had ever seen. She sank into royal blue velvet cushions, luxuriating in the softness after so many days on the hard cracked leather seats of the public coach.
    Lord Stacks sat across from her, his face stern. "It appears I have been under the misapprehension that you were a---"
    "A boy," she finished.
    His black eyes flashed with emotion. Was it disgust? "Exactly."
    He must not suspect how vulnerable she was. Above all, she would not allow herself to be the object of his pity. Her spine went straight as a poker. "I completely understand if your lordship wishes to retract your offer," she began.
    "You have had a long journey, Miss Lambeth," he said, his voice inscrutable. "You will need to rest at Marshbanks Abbey. Once you are refreshed, we will discuss your stay."
    As he gazed at the smoky-colored landscape out the coach window, Freddie took the opportunity to covertly study his appearance. He was as different from the fatherly guardian she had pictured as she was to the lad he had imagined her to be. That he did not at all look like the aging, pasty-skinned intellectual she had expected, unsettled her. He was neither collegiately young, nor did he look old enough to be her father. And nothing about him hinted at the scholar. His dark skin and lithe, athletic body were at odds with the picture her father had drawn of Lord Stacks. Lord Stacks the Recluse. Lord Stacks the Intellectual. In her mind’s eye she had foolishly conjured a bespectacled, gray-haired main lounging in a library, his gouty foot propped up on a stack of musty books.
    The man sitting opposite her dressed in finely made soft leather Hessians, well-cut breeches with cut-away coat of rich camel color, and crisp ivory shirt and cravat, looked as if he belonged in the finest London drawing rooms, not in remote Northumbria. He displayed the agreeable looks and breeding of a man over whom young women like her beautiful cousin Roxanne would make a cake of themselves.
    How foolish Freddie had been to secretly hope that Lord Stacks might be happy to have someone as plain and unaccomplished as she come to give him companionship in his lonely abbey!
    As her gaze flicked once more to her guardian, he looked up, his black eyes holding hers. Embarrassed, Freddie quickly averted her gaze and rubbed her arms for warmth. The chill seemed to intensify by the howling winds outside the carriage. A pity her pelisse had worn so thin.
    Now off the major posting roads, Freddie inhaled the scent of peat bogs and was able to observe the moors up close. How very well the solitary landscape suited her. Not even a tree grew here in the craggy land of wailing winds. Nor were there any stone cottages or low stone walls here like she had seen scattered around Yorkshire. The forlornness was unlike anything she could ever have imagined growing up among the sunny meadows of Sussex.
    This was not the place for delicate flowers. The biting winds demanded the hardiness of the spiny gorse and thorny thistle that shimmered and waved along the rippling moors. She would never have been able to imagine how such a landscape could hold such vast allure for