Seducing an Angel Read Free Page B

wealthy earl. His sisters—all three of them—had found it, though all three marriages had admittedly made shaky beginnings.
    Perhaps somewhere, somehow, sometime, there would be love for him too.
    In the meanwhile, he was enjoying life—and avoiding the matrimonial traps that were becoming all too numerous and familiar to him.
    “I believe,” Constantine said as they rode onward, “the lady would have been happy to tumble right out of that seat, Stephen, if she could have been quite sure you were close enough to catch her.”
    Stephen chuckled.
    “I was about to ask you,” he said, “what it is between you and Elliott—and Nessie. Your quarrel has been going on for as long as I have known you. What caused it?”
    He had known Con for eight years. It was Elliott, as executor of the recently deceased Earl of Merton’s will, who had come to inform Stephen that the title, along with everything that went with it, was now his. Stephen had been living with his sisters in a small cottage in the village of Throckbridge in Shropshire at the time. Elliott, Viscount Lyngate then, though he was Duke of Moreland now, had been Stephen’s official guardian for four years until he reached his majority. Elliott had spent time with them at Warren Hall, Stephen’s principal seat in Hampshire. Con had been there too for a while—it was his home. He was the elder brother of the earl who had just died at the age of sixteen. He was the eldest son of the earl who had preceded his brother, though he could not succeed to the title himself because he had been born two days before his parents married and was therefore legally illegitimate.
    It had been clear from the start that Elliott and Con did not like each other. More than that, it had been clear that there was a real enmity there. Something had happened between them.
    “You would have to ask Moreland that,” Constantine said in answer to his question. “I believe it had something to do with his being a pompous ass.”
    Elliott was not pompous—or asinine. He did, however, poker up quite noticeably whenever he was forced to be in company with Constantine.
    Stephen did not pursue the matter. Obviously Con was not going to tell him what had happened, and he had every right to guard his secrets.
    Con was something of a puzzle, actually. Although he had always been amiable with both Stephen and his sisters, there was an edge of darkness to him, a certain brooding air despite his charm and ready smile. He had bought a home of his own somewhere in Gloucestershire after his brother’s death, but none of them had ever been invited there—or anyone else of Stephen’s acquaintance, for that matter. And no one knew how he could have afforded it. His father had doubtless made decent provision for him, but to such a degree that he could go off and buy himself a home and estate?
    It was none of Stephen’s business, of course.
    But he did sometimes wonder why Constantine had always been friendly. Stephen and his sisters had been strangers when they suddenly invaded his home and claimed it as their own. Stephen had the title Earl of Merton, one that Con’s brother had borne just a few months previously, and his father before that. It was a title that would have been Con’s if he had been born three days later or if his parents had married three days sooner.
    Ought he not to have been bitter? Even to the point of hatred? Should he not still be bitter?
    Stephen often wondered how much went on inside Con’s mind that was never expressed in either words or actions.
    “It must be as hot as Hades under there,” Constantine said just after they had stopped to exchange pleasantries with a group of male acquaintances. He nodded in the direction of the footpath to their left.
    There was a crowd of people walking there, but it was not difficult to see to whom Con referred.
    There was a cluster of five ladies, all of them brightly and fashionably dressed in colors that complemented the summer. Just