Regency: Rakes & Reputations (Mills & Boon M&B) Read Free Page A

Make it a holiday. Let someone else handle this.”
    Jamie looked down into his glass again. Good sense and reason told him Drew was right. However. “I’ve been on this case from the beginning, Drew. I intend to see it through to the end.”
    “‘Pears to me it’s more personal than that.”
    Jamie tossed the remainder of his wine down and stood. Damn Drew’s perception! “I want that blasted scum dangling from a rope for what he’s done, and justice for—” he stopped himself from saying
Eugenia
and substituted “—for all their victims. And I bloody well want an end to all the secrets and lies.”
    “It always comes down to that with you, does it not—needing to know every last detail, every last truth? Why, Jamie? What drives you to that?”
    “Truth never fails. There is no argument against it. It is the only rampart that remains when all else is crumbling. Truth tames chaos. It is just, honest and right. You can stand by it unashamed, depend upon it. If I did not stand for truth, what else would matter?”
    “I pity when you finally learn that some questions are better left unanswered, and that the truth does not always serve you best.” Andrew pushed his glass away and shook his head. “The world is not as black and white as you think, brother, and the truth is a double-edged sword. If you chase after it, be damned sure you are prepared to get cut.”
    “Living with lies could never be better,” he said with unshakable certainty. “C’mon, Charlie. It appears I am going to need you to watch my back.”

Chapter Two
    G ina had expected shock, perhaps even outraged protests, but not stunned silence. Apart from the heavy rain outside the windows and the decisive tick of the tall case clock on the wall opposite the fireplace, the library was silent. Not even the clink of a teacup being replaced in its saucer broke the spell.
    She glanced around the circle at the faces of her friends. Her sister, Isabella, looked as if she were sitting atop a coiled spring, ready to catapult off the settee and restrain her. Lady Annica, a darkly beautiful woman, wore a puzzled frown; Lady Sarah’s expression was curious with a tinge of sympathy in her violet eyes—eyes so like her brother’s that it always caught Gina by surprise. Grace Hawthorne, whom she had just met today, was more difficult to read, but Gina thought there might be a small crack in her serene countenance.
    Gina cleared her throat and prayed she could keep her voice steady. “I was given to believe this group might be of some help in the matter. If not, then I apologize for broaching the subject.”
    A collective sigh was expelled and Isabella rose. “Gina! Are you mad?” She hurried to the library door, tested the lock, and returned to her chair.
    “Nearly so,” Gina admitted. Indeed, there was very little difference between true madness and what she’d been feeling for the past two months. “But I have come to believe that finding Mr. Henley is the only way I can change that.”
    “How do you propose to do that, dear?” Grace Hawthorne asked as she set her teacup down and smoothed her sky-blue skirts.
    “I do not know how much you may have heard about my family’s recent problems, Mrs. Hawthorne, but they have been extraordinary. The dust has settled a bit, what with Isabella and Lilly marrying, but I am still …” Gina stopped to clear her throat again, which was frequently raw since Lord Daschel had nicked it with a knife. “Still at odds.”
    Grace, who had been out of the country with her husband, gave a little smile of encouragement and Isabella hastened to finish Gina’s explanation. “Almost as soon as our family arrived in London in May, our oldest sister, Cora, was kidnapped and murdered. Gina and I undertook to find the killer when the authorities had given up. Cora lived long enough to tell us that her killer was a member of the ton. With that as our only clue, we sought out men who fit that description and who had an