Once Tempted Read Free Page A

mother would know, she often told her pragmatic butler. If Robert were dead, I would know.
    “This is all that Sutton creature’s fault,” her ladyship was saying, causing any number of her staff to look away, some of the cheekier footmen to roll their gaze heavenward.
    Carlyle sent one and all his most severe stare. If their mistress wanted to blame the infamous debutante for the marquis’s hasty and fatal departure from London, who were they to question her?
    “If that horrible jade hadn’t led my poor, sensitive boy astray, he wouldn’t have had to flee town in such a confused state.” The marchioness paused for a moment, her lips pursed, her jaw set with long held rage. “I shudder to think of him all those years ago, lost and undone over that wretched affair, prey to who knows what sort of fiends and villainy. I told Mr. Hawthorne-Waite this very morning that I am convinced Robert was most likely kidnapped and taken aboard some other villainous ship against his will. For he would never have gone off voluntarily on that awful Bon Venture.” She paused again.
    Carlyle waited for her final refrain. It hadn’t changed a word in seven years.
    And after the requisite pause, she finished her vehement rail. “Lisbon, indeed! My Robert would never have gone to such a heathen place by choice.”
    “Yes, indeed, ma’am,” Carlyle replied.
    Her ladyship sighed. “And so I told Mr. Hawthorne-Waite. Though I am starting to doubt that man’s qualifications as a solicitor.” She turned her watery blue eyes on the butler. “He is of the opinion that kidnapping is not reason enough to keep one’s son from being declared dead.”
    “A terrible injustice, ma’am.”
    She smiled bravely and began to take the steps again up to the front door. “And he also refused to find and bring that jade to justice. She murdered that poor Spaniard. Who’s to say she didn’t harm my Robert as well? And can you imagine my shock, Carlyle, when that odious little solicitor had the audacity to intimate that she more than likely died with my Robert! Can you fathom such a thing? My Robert taking a murderess with him to Lisbon? I think not.”
    “Yes, my lady,” Carlyle said, while silently agreeing with the solicitor’s tactless assessment of the situation. Why shouldn’t he?
    Witnesses had seen Miss Sutton crouched over the body of the dead Spanish agent, a smoking pistol in her hand. Lord Bradstone had told several of the gathered crowd that Miss Sutton had committed the crime. Then in the hubbub and panic, Lord Bradstone had disappeared. Slipped away and fled London in the dark of night aboard the Bon Venture. And to make the entire scandal even more lurid, the next morning Miss Sutton was also gone.
    After a brief investigation, letters found in Miss Sutton’s room linked her and the marquis romantically. Several of them had been reprinted in the press, telling the sordid tale of their secret affair.
    Yet through it all, Lady Bradstone refused to believe anything that tainted her son’s reputation. With each year, her remembrances of the man had grown and risen to such proportions it was hard to believe that such a paragon had ever existed.
    “Oh, Carlyle, what will I tell Robert when he comes home and finds I have lost his title and estates?” The lady’s lip quivered, her eyes welling up with familiar tears.
    He directed her toward the door. Once inside, he’d settle her in her favorite drawing room with a large pot of tea and a tray of her favorite cakes. Perhaps then he could broach the truth of the matter one more time and see if he could convince her ladyship to take a more constructive view of their situation.
    It was about time the lady believed what everyone else knew to be true.
    The Marquis of Bradstone was not coming home.
    As Carlyle turned to take the overly familiar step of telling her ladyship that she ought to heed the solicitor’s advice and start planning for a less than secure future, he noticed the