To Wed A Viscount Read Free

do, so I couldn’t ask anyone for help.”
    The sailor leaned closer and added in a gruff whisper, “Besides, what I did understand made me realize that this is your private business, Captain. I thought it best not to let anyone else see it. It concerns the boy.”
    The two men shifted their eyes to the small child clutching the woman’s hand. The boy made a small sound of distress and shrank behind her skirts.
    â€œAre you his mother?” Griffin asked the young woman.
    â€œI am his nursemaid. His mother is dead.”
    Griffin frowned. He hadn’t gotten a very close look at the child, yet there was something disturbingly familiar about him.
    Turning his back on the trio, Griffin swung his legs over the side of the bed and read the note. He felt Suzanne shift restlessly beside him. Griffin angled his head toward her absently, and she gave him a saucy grin only he could see, running her tongue suggestively along her front teeth.
    Her playful sexuality helped to lighten his mood. But not for long. As he read the brief letter, he could feel his jaw tense. He bent forward and took a gasping breath, then reached down and scooped his breeches off the floor.
    Slowly he pulled them on, detachably realizing that he had hardly absorbed the words on the page, yet they were burned in his brain.

    I am sending you our son, dear Griffin, in hopes that you will find it in your heart to acknowledge and care for him. He has known little happiness in his short life and needs a father’s protection, if not his love. Since I am no longer able, I beg you, take care of him.

    Dressed in breeches and a hastily donned shirt, Griffin once again faced the mulatto servant. He moved closer, his lip curled in a tight, humorless smile. “You know what the letter says, do you not?”
    â€œY-yes.” She pressed her trembling lips together. “She asks you to care for him, because you are the boy’s father.”
    â€œWho sent you?” Griffin reached out and grasped the servant’s arm. “I want to talk to them. Now.”
    â€œYou . . . You cannot, sir.” She backed away fearfully, but Griffin tightened his grip. “The letter was written by the boy’s mother, Rosemary Morton.”
    â€œYou said his mother is dead.”
    â€œShe is, sir. Nearly six months now.” The maid’s mouth twisted into a thin line as she slipped from his grasp. “The sickness came on her fast. I swear she used her last ounce of strength to write that letter. And she made me promise that if the Defiant ever came back to Charleston, I would take her child and this note and deliver them both to Captain Griffin Sainthill.”
    Rosemary Morton. Griffin racked his brain for a memory, a face to place on that vaguely familiar name. Finally the image came to mind, a tiny red-haired young woman with blue eyes, lush lips, and a ready smile.
    They had met at a party he had attended hoping to further his business connections. Rosemary’s father was a wealthy merchant, eager to trade goods with all the brash young sea captains.
    Griffin had thought the merchant’s daughter a fetching lass. There was a delicate beauty about her that appealed to him, a sultry sexiness behind the innocent facade that beckoned. She had danced with many men that night, but favored him with the most teasing and flirtatious conversation.
    He had been delighted to discover she was not the sheltered virgin he had first believed. Consequently, they had shared a brief interlude of mutual satisfaction the last time he had been in Charleston. Roughly four years ago.
    â€œHow old is the boy?” Griffin asked.
    â€œHis third birthday was in August.”
    The timing was right. Yet Griffin was not so easily convinced. He had lived his adult life as a carefree bachelor, moving from woman to woman, seeking mutual pleasures wherever they were to be found. Yet he had deliberately chosen partners who had both skill and