Three Weeks With Lady X Read Free Page A

their feet. “You keep your hands off my stepmother. I had no idea that you had propensities of that nature.”
    “You should see your face!” Vander was positively howling with laughter. “Your stepmother is a very nice woman,” he said finally, more or less recovering himself. “But I don’t want her, you idiot. I want the type of marriage those two have. I want what Villiers has.” He took another slug. “I’ll be damned if I’ll settle for anything less.”
    “I don’t consider the marriage I’m contemplating to be lesser,” Thorn objected. “Just different. My father’s life revolves around Eleanor, and hers around him. I can’t see either of us altering our habits for a woman. What about all those horses you’re training, and the fact you’re constantly off to one steeplechase or another? I have no problem imagining you with a wife—but one who is the center of your life? No.”
    “I would make time,” Vander stated.
    “Why?”
    “You really have no idea, do you?”
    “What I know is that Laetitia is remarkably beautiful and she’s a lady, which will protect my children from being shunned as a result of my birth. Part of the reason I treasure my stepmother is that she’s unlike any other woman I’ve met. Quite frankly, I’ve come to believe another such woman doesn’t exist.”
    “She has to, Thorn.” Vander came to his feet but didn’t walk away, just stood, staring down at Thorn. “I want to love a woman the way your father loves his wife. I don’t care if she looks like an apple seller. I want to feel passion for the woman I marry. It doesn’t seem too much to ask.”
    “My father almost married a woman who belonged in Bedlam,” Thorn said, leaning back so he could see Vander’s face. “It was pure accident that paired him with Eleanor. Are you hoping that the perfect woman will simply wander in your door?”
    “If she doesn’t, then I’d rather not bother,” Vander said flatly. He moved to the decanter and refilled his glass. “If I’m to change my life to suit a woman, she’d damned well better be worth my trouble.”
    He had a point there. Thorn was fairly sure marriage would be a bother. In order to woo Laetitia, he had been obliged to buy a country estate, although he was perfectly comfortable living in London. What’s more, he was taking on a wife when he already had twenty-three servants, along with men working in factories, solicitors’ offices, and the rest.
    But he wanted children, and for that he needed a wife. He liked children. Children, whether boys or girls, were curious. They liked to ask questions; they wanted to understand how things worked.
    “Since you’re not planning to change your life, I suppose you’ll keep your mistress?” Vander dropped back into his chair, taking care not to spill his brandy.
    “I pensioned her off the day after I met Laetitia.”
    “Then I’ll point out the obvious. You are signing up to sleep with no woman other than Laetitia Rainsford for the rest of your bleeding life.”
    He shrugged. “She will give me children. And I have no doubt she will be faithful, so I’ll pay her the same respect.”
    “Loyalty is one of your few virtues,” Vander acknowledged. “The problem with you,” he added, staring contemplatively into his brandy, “is your infernal childhood.”
    Thorn couldn’t argue with that. Spending his boyhood as a penniless mudlark—diving into the Thames to search for anything of value in the muck—had shaped him. He had learned the hard way that danger lurked where you couldn’t see it.
    “You don’t trust anyone,” Vander continued, waxing philosophical. “Your father should have kept a better eye on you. I’ll be damned if I misplace any of my children, even if I produce a bastard, which I won’t.”
    “My childhood made me what I am. I wouldn’t trade it to be the pampered son of a duke.”
    Vander shot him a sardonic look. Thorn was the only one who knew what horrors had lurked