Once Tempted Read Free

wasn’t going to live, for the pain spread throughout his chest, his body convulsing with wrenching finality. His eyelids grew too heavy to remain open, while a mixture of darkness and comforting light began blotting out his senses. As he started to drift away, a soft, warm hand cradled his, pulling him back.
    Over the buzzing in his ears, he heard Bradstone’s voice saying, “Miss Sutton has committed a murder. That man there. She shot him.”
    There were gasps and shouts but not from the lady herself.
    No, Orlando tried to tell the growing crowd of witnesses. She didn’t do this.
    “¿ Cómo podría ayudarle ?” she whispered in his native tongue. How can I help you?
    He fumbled to free his hand and with the last ounce of strength he possessed he pulled the ring from his finger. She still held the note in her hand, so he set the gold band atop it and crushed his fingers over hers, tightening her grasp on his two most precious belongings.
    The bright light now filled the room. It distracted his thoughts and strangely eased his pain. As much as he wanted to abandon himself to its comforting warmth, he couldn’t leave this girl behind to pay for his mistakes.
    “Run, now,” he managed to say. “Go as far as you can. Hide where they cannot find you. Give this to no one but—” The pain overcame him, and he stumbled over the name that should have come so easily to him.
    “Who?” she pleaded. “Who should I give it to?”
    “Hobbe,” he managed to whisper before he finally relented his life to what he could only hope were angels overhead.

Chapter 1
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    London, 1812
    “H ow was your trip to the solicitor, my lady?” Carlyle asked as he helped his mistress, the Marchioness of Bradstone, down from her carriage.
    “Wretched!” she complained. “The incompetent man says there is nothing we can do. Nothing in the least. He is certain that next month the House of Lords will pronounce Robert dead and allow the title to revert to the Crown.”
    Carlyle shook his head. “I feared as much, madame.”
    Her ladyship fluttered her handkerchief. “A month, Carlyle! A month!” she wailed. “Where will I live? Where will I go? Everything that matters is entailed with the estate.”
    Where will we all go ? Carlyle would have liked to add to her lament. The Bradstone staff had just as much at stake as their mistress in the Parnell family keeping the title—their livelihoods depended upon it as well.
    Lady Bradstone drew her handkerchief to her nose and sniffed. “If only my dearest boy would come home and prevent all this. Surely he must know the fits and tremblings his continued absence causes me, let alone this newest injustice.”
    “If his lordship were aware, my lady, I am sure he would hasten home without further delay,” Carlyle said very diplomatically. He had tried on any number of occasions to explain to her that it was highly unlikely her son would ever come home.
    For seven long years she’d denied that her son had fled the scandalous scene and sought passage on the doomed Bon Venture. Seven years of refusing to believe her son had been on that ship when it was attacked and sunk by the French off the coast of Portugal. The papers had been filled with the sad tale of how all hands and passengers had been lost.
    Including the Marquis of Bradstone.
    In the ensuing years, the marquis’s estate had been cast in turmoil—first from a lack of heirs and now because of the Prince Regent’s maneuvering to see the title revert back to the Crown.
    Apparently Prinny wanted to reward one of his favorites with the prestigious title and the accompanying rich estates.
    But the greatest impediment to disposing of the Bradstone legacy turned out to be the marquis’s mother. Lady Bradstone refused to believe her son had perished. Not even the eyewitness account provided by the captain of a nearby packet ship swayed her from her unshakeable belief that her son had escaped death’s watery trap.
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