Taming Beauty Read Free Page A

than they had the last time he’d tallied them.
    “I’m afraid not, my lord.”
    Jasper tossed down his quill, narrowly missing the inkstand sitting atop the organized clutter on his desk, and lifted his head. “What is it, man?”
    Dervish blinked, but then the man always blinked when confronted head on with the scar running down the right side of Jasper’s face from temple to jaw.
    Which begged the question of what was so bloody important the man would not only interrupt him in his study, but be so insistent as to necessitate his undivided attention. “Well, what is it?”
    “Today is Saturday, my lord.”
    “Yesterday was Friday and tomorrow will be Sunday,” Jasper replied. “What of it?”
    “Your intended is due to arrive today.” Dervish scrubbed one gnarled hand over his bald head.  “Along with his lordship, the Earl of Dunaway.”
    “Have they arrived?”
    “No, my lord.”
    “Do not bother me again until they do.” Jasper returned to his ledger, fully prepared to put the matter of his intended and her wastrel of a father out of his mind.
    “If I may, my lord—”
    “Damn it, what must I do to get you to go away?” Slapping the ledger shut, he rose to his feet and planted both hands on the desk. “Tell me and you shall have it, if you will only leave me in peace.”
    “The bedchambers. That is, after the wedding…but what about before?” Dervish stammered and shifted about in agitation. “Where are we to put Lady Priscilla?”
    “Are the dungeons habitable?”
    “Breckenridge House hasn’t any dungeons,” the butler argued. “Leastwise none I’ve ever seen, and I been here nigh on sixty years.”
    “Isn’t there an entire wing for guests?”
    “Miss Amelia and Mr. and Mrs. Rossiter are occupying the west wing.”
    “All six chambers?”
    “Only four of the chambers are…er, habitable.”
    “There, that leaves two unoccupied.”
    “Begging your pardon, but Mrs. Rossiter said as how her husband is to have his own room, on account of his snoring.”
    Jasper suspected the separate bedchambers had less to do with Rossiter’s snoring than Susan’s desire to enjoy a London Season before she was shuffled off to the country for yet another confinement. “Put Lady Priscilla in the fourth chamber and her father in the one across the hall from mine. Matthew and his friend can bunk together if we’ve a cot somewhere about.”
    “And the companion?”
    “What companion?”
    “Er, there is a woman traveling with his lordship and Lady Priscilla,” Dervish replied, his tone indicative of some great scandal he was bursting to share. “A Miss Aberdeen, I believe.”
    The name tugged at some long forgotten memory from his days in London, before misplaced honor had exiled him on the Cornish coast. Jasper pushed the memory away, the same as he’d done to all such memories of bygone times.
    “Put the lady in the bachelor’s apartments.”
    “Those rooms haven’t been occupied in years on account of they’re far removed from the house proper.”
    “Precisely.”
    Dunaway would have to descend two flights of stairs, traverse dark halls, open and close a heavy wooden door with rusty hinges, pick his way through the overgrown garden, climb a spiral staircase and navigate the warped, old boards of the narrow balcony running the length of the building to get to his ladybird.
    With Jasper’s chambers being situated directly across from the old bachelor’s quarters, he would have a box seat, in the form of his own balcony for the entertainment. Or the terrace just off his study, if the performance was to be a matinee. “See how easy that was, Dervish?”
    “Quite, my lord,” the old man replied with a bow that set his back to creaking.
    The butler departed but before the door had quite closed behind him, an elfin, ginger-haired girl slipped into Jasper’s study, never mind the room was off-limits to anyone below four feet in height.
    She stopped just inside, tilted up her face and