Wicked Promise Read Free Page B

mistress, the self-centered Lady Dandridge, a woman who hardly set foot out of doors for fear of dampening her perfectly coiffed hair or freckling her flawlessly white, unblemished skin. He wondered what Elizabeth Woolcot would think of Miriam but he was fairly sure he knew the answer.
    Footsteps sounded. Nick's gaze slid past the heavy walnut paneling, the rows of gold-lettered, leather-bound books, to the place where Nigel Wicker, Baron St. George, had just walked in through the open study door.
    "Ah... so there you are, old boy. We were wondering where you'd got off to." He was a florid, overweight man in his early forties, prone to gout and somewhat foulmouthed. But he liked to gamble and he liked to whore. He was a friend of Lord Percy's, who was a friend of Lord Tidwicke's, and somewhere along the way they had all become friends of Nick's.
    "Percy is looking for you," the baron went on. "Got a game of whist going in the Oak Room and they want you to join the play."
    "It's early yet. I was just finishing up in here." Going over the ledgers, checking on his tenants, getting ready for the spring barley sowing, for planting vegetables, peas, and beans. But he didn't say that. It was no one else's business and it hardly fit his image.
    "Richard's winning," the baron said, "feeling quite the thing. He says his luck is running. Tidwicke and I have a bet. I say you'll have Richard's winnings cleaned out and a marker to boot before it's time for supper."
    His mouth curved at that. He could beat Richard Turner- Wilcox six ways to dawn if he put his mind to it and stayed off the drink. Then again, where was the fun in that?
    "All right, I'll be there in a minute. Ask one of the servants to bring me some gin, would you?'' He grinned. "Suddenly I'm feeling very thirsty."
    "Gin." St. George grimaced. "Most uncivilized." He went out muttering something about the evils of blue ruin, the cheap liquor Nick had developed a taste for during his years of indenture.
    Nick didn't care. He'd given up worrying about what other people thought of him years ago.
    A few minutes passed and a light knock sounded. Theophilus Swann, his number-one footman, appeared at the door. "Yer gin, milord." Dressed in Raven worth black and scarlet livery, blond and fair-skinned with a receding hairline, Theo lifted a crystal decanter and a thick-bottomed glass off a silver salver and set it on the desk. "Will there be anythin' else, milord?"
    "Nothing at present Thank you, Theo." The footman backed away and Nick took a long sip of the cool, clear liquid, enjoying the burn as it began to warm his stomach. He gazed back out the window, easily finding the slender figure now perched on a wrought-iron bench beneath a willow tree at the far end of the garden.
    Undoubtedly Elizabeth Woolcot would frown on his drinking. She didn't approve of him, he knew. He had seen it in her eyes at their first meeting and several times since. His mouth thinned. He downed the liquor in a single swallow, lifted the lid off the decanter, and refilled his glass to the brim.

    From her place in the garden, Elizabeth studied the spires arid towers, the pediments and gables, of Ravenworth Hall. It was fashioned of smooth gray stone with tall mullioned windows and ornately carved doors. It was completed in the sixteenth century, according to the butler, and owned by the Warring family ever since. It was a huge house, with a hundred and forty lavishly furnished rooms, sixty of which were bedchambers.
    Currently much of the hall was not in use, but all of it was surprisingly well maintained, and the grounds, an almost parklike setting, were as beautiful as any Elizabeth had ever seen.
    She trailed a finger over the scrollwork on the wrought-iron bench where she sat and tried not glance up at the second floor, at the window that was the Earl of Ravenworth's private study. She knew he was watching. She had seen him there at the window nearly every day since her arrival.
    She wondered what he did