The Wedding Game Read Free Page A

consumption of sweets to be more than ordinary. She had wondered if he'd been buying them for the poor children who attended his surgery at St. Mary Abbot's. It was an idea that had sparked her own empathetic nature and had made her eager to meet the man. But he was very different in person from how she had imagined him.
    She put back her veil with a little sigh of relief as the cool air laved her overheated complexion. Mrs. Beedle had seemed to like him, but of course it stood to reason that the keeper of a small corner shop wouldn't have intimate knowledge of her customers. Was he living in Kensington? It seemed likely if he patronized Mrs. Beedle's shop. It was respectable enough, but hardly a fashionable address for an up-and-coming Harley Street physician. Convenient enough, of course, for an Earl's Court surgery. And presumably cheap enough. And money, of course, was one of his problems.
    Chastity told herself that the Go-Between was a matchmaking service and passing moral judgment on its clients was not part of that service. If you looked at it from one point of view, the doctor had merely been blunt and to the point in stating his objectives.
    It was just a hard point of view for Chastity to take. Dr. Farrell was coldly calculating. He wanted a wife who was both rich and influential, a woman that he could use for his own purposes. It made her scalp crawl. She was aware of an overwhelming sense of disappointment.
    The cab drew up outside the imposing facade of No. 10 and she stepped down to the curb before paying the driver. She then hurried up the steps to the front door, shivering in a gust of wind that swept across the square garden. Jenkins, the butler, opened the door for her before she reached the top step.
    “I saw the cab draw up, Miss Chas,” he said by way of explanation. “There's a bitter wind this afternoon.”
    “It smells like snow,” Chastity said, stepping into the hall that was warmed by a fat steam radiator. “Is my father in?”
    “His lordship hasn't left the library, Miss Chas,” Jenkins said. “He says he thinks he's getting a bit of a chill.”
    “Oh, dear.” Chastity frowned as she took off her gloves and hat. “Should we call the doctor?”
    “I asked, but he said no.”
    Chastity nodded. “I'll go and see him. Perhaps he'd like some tea with whisky.”
    “I took the whisky decanter in just after luncheon,” Jenkins said.
    Chastity frowned again. Lord Duncan had become increasingly depressed since the libel case that had exposed the perfidy of his erstwhile bosom friend, the earl of Barclay. The case had exposed both his friend's betrayal and his own blind stupidity in trusting him. It was the latter that troubled Lord Duncan the most, or so his three daughters believed. Through his own stupidity he had lost the family fortune, entrusting it to a man who could be trusted only to deceive and defraud. As a result, Lord Duncan's daughters had turned
The Mayfair Lady
and the Go-Between into paying propositions whose income for a while had kept their father in ignorance of the true state of the family finances. That fact too was eating away at Lord Duncan's pride. The fact that his daughters had kept the truth from him while making shift themselves to keep the household from bankruptcy was something with which he could not come to terms.
    Chastity went towards the library and hesitated, her hand raised to knock. Since Prudence's marriage six weeks earlier, Chastity was the only daughter living at 10 Manchester Square and the burden of Lord Duncan's increasing depression lay heaviest upon her shoulders. It was not that her sisters wouldn't share the burden, but simple physical distance from the house separated them from the moment-by-moment recognition.
    She tapped lightly and then went into the room. It was in the semidarkness of late afternoon, with only the glow from the fire providing any illumination. “Wouldn't you like the lamps lit, Father?” she asked, closing the door