The Gallant Guardian Read Free

landed Maximilian in this muddle. Obviously the earl had not been as strong as a cart horse and now here he was, saddled with—how many children was it? The marquess glanced uneasily at a heap of unanswered correspondence piled high on a corner of his desk. Undoubtedly the full particulars of the case lay buried somewhere in there, thoroughly explained in an official document from Harcourt’s solicitor. For the past several weeks Lydon had been too involved in raising capital for his newest venture to pay much attention to anything else and now he was being suitably punished for this lapse.
    The marquess sighed as he pulled the pile of letters toward him and began to sort through it. “Thank you, Felbridge. You were quite right to bring this letter to my attention, though I wish you had not, for now there is nothing to do but attend to it.” Max pulled out a heavy sheet of crested stationery, scrawled a few lines, and handed it to the waiting Felbridge. “Here, take this to Mr. Sedgewick in his chambers at Gray’s Inn, if you would, please. He will take care of it.”
    Having consigned the welfare of Lady Charlotte Winterbourne and her brother to the care of his solicitor. Lord Lydon returned to his own more pressing business concerns without a second thought for the wards he had inadvertently gained.
     

Chapter Two
     
    The wards, or at least one of the wards, was not about to be so easily dismissed. Hastily perusing the content of a letter from the estimable Mr. Sedgewick some days later, Charlotte Winterbourne frowned mightily and dashed it to the floor with a most unladylike expression of annoyance. The extremely civil tone of this particular letter did not deceive her for a moment. Once again she and her brother were being fobbed off, their care entrusted to the minion of a man too busy to concern himself with their welfare. She should not have been surprised at such a state of affairs, she told herself angrily. After all, her father had been ignoring his children for years, turning them over to an army of well-paid nurses and tutors so that he could forget their very existence while he immersed himself in his own affairs. Why should things be any different when he was dead?
    Undoubtedly this Lord Lydon, someone close enough to the Earl of Harcourt to be chosen as guardian of his children, shared the earl’s distaste for familial obligations. Oh, she and William had been well enough looked after while her father lived in town. They had lacked for nothing in the way of creature comforts; any wish they had expressed had been granted and they had been given more than ample allowances. In fact, she and her brother William had lacked for nothing, but love. During his exceedingly infrequent visits to the home of his ancestors the earl had made it abundantly clear that his children held no more meaning for him than his vast estates. They were his duty and nothing more, part of the ancient heritage of the Earls of Harcourt that was to be administered and passed on to succeeding generations as his father had done before him. He lavished no more attention on them than he did on pointing the bricks of the chimneys or repairing the fences around the pastures. They were all exquisitely maintained, by her father’s servants, but that was the extent of the earl’s concern for them.
    Well she, Charlotte, was not going to suffer such cavalier treatment. She might be passed off and ignored, but she was not about to allow such a thing to happen to William. As a young man of fifteen and the new Earl of Harcourt, he needed more guidance than an occasional letter from some solicitor in London.
    Charlotte tucked her legs up under her, rested her chin on her hand, and stared out through the French doors that opened from the library onto the terrace. The park beyond stretched as far as the eye could see. Frowning, she tugged abstractedly at one stray dark curl as she concentrated on her next move. Obviously, mere correspondence was not