Samantha James Read Free Page B

Duval…and thus await his quarry.
    He tipped his head slightly. “So I’m told,” he murmured. “A pity, his death, but I confess, I’m eager to stay on in Lancashire.”
    Mr. Simpson’s head bobbed up and down. “The Lord’s pocket, m’wife calls it.” He laid down a serving fork. “You’ll find no better woman than Miss Heather. She’s fair and always does well by her people. Why, a veritable saint, m’wife calls her. But that’s little wonder, considering she was raised by the Earl and Countess of Stonehurst. The earl took her in after the carriage accident that killed her parents, y’know.”
    Damien nodded. Cameron had told him thatwas the story everyone believed—but it was not true. No, the man in the carriage with the woman was not her husband—nor the father of the girl…
    For the husband still lived, blast his rotten, dirty soul!
    A fleeting shadow crossed Mr. Simpson’s features. He sighed. “’Tis really such a shame….” His voice trailed off, and he shook his head.
    Everything inside Damien seemed to stand at attention. He waited for Mr. Simpson to say more, but the old man did not. He caught his pocket watch in hand and glanced at it. “Well,” he said lightly, “I’d best be off. It wouldn’t do to be late.”
    “Good luck,” Mr. Simpson called after him.
    Outside, he mounted Zeus, a towering black that had been Giles’s favorite mount…. There was a faint catch in his heart. God, but he would give anything— anything! —for Giles to be alive still….
    His mood darkened, like a black cloud across the moon. Faces flashed before him as he guided Zeus down the narrow lane that wound through the village. The glances cast his way were curious, yet not unfriendly. He passed two dark-haired women selling baskets at a market stand; the pair was engaged in vivacious discussion, interspersed with laughter.
    He envied them their carefreeness.
    Outside the milliner’s cottage, two young boys wrestled in the dirt, rolling wildly. Damien couldn’t help but remember how he and Gileshad often indulged in such play, rough and tumbling and reckless. As children, they had been nearly inseparable, for there was scarcely more than a year between them in age. They had shared the same bedchamber. Bedeviled their tutor and plotted antics far into the night. Whispered of grand plans for the future, when at last they left their youth behind.
    The glimmer of a smile curved Damien’s lips, even as a pang shot through him. Giles had often boasted that he would someday be the illustrious captain of a vast seagoing vessel with a crew of a hundred men, charting his course across the seas and making a name for himself in the far-flung ports of the world. As for himself, he had been no less daring and grandiose. He had dreamed of acquiring fame and fortune, of building an empire of land and wealth the likes of which no man had ever seen….
    But they were the dreams of children, for nothing had turned out as planned…. Both father and mother had died, and their care was given over to their mother’s sister Gertrude; it was under Aunt Gertrude’s guidance that he and Giles had grown to manhood. So it was that with their father’s death, Giles’s dreams had ended, for he was the new Earl of Deverell. Instead he—Damien—was the one who had sailed the seas while Giles went off to Cambridge; he had traveled to America and left the business of the earldom in the hands of his elder brother, Giles.
    His mouth a grim, straight line, Damien spurred his mount onward. He ducked beneaththe low-hanging branch of an oak tree, then veered around the bottom of a grassy knoll. His jaw was clenched tight, as if to do battle. Indeed, he had to remind himself that his battle was not with Miss Heather Duval…
    She was but the means to her father.
    It was then that Lockhaven Park came into view. Without realizing it, Damien reined in his mount and came to a halt. As he’d been when he’d first seen it, he couldn’t