Greetings of the Season and Other Stories Read Online Free Page B

they had room in their tiny cottage.
    For certain she could not stay on at Montravan Hall much longer. The earl was bringing home a bride. It was not official yet, but it was all anyone could talk of, and a sure thing, according to the kitchen wagering. She was known to be a peeress with fortune and face, manners and a mind. Lady Belinda Harleigh. Petra said the name over to herself. Belinda. Belinda and Bevin. Perfect.
    Lady Belinda would have been brought up to manage a household like Montravan; she’d be an experienced guide for Allissa through the shoals of a London Season; Lady Montravan was already calculating the settlements.
    So there was no reason for Petra to stay, nothing here for her except more heartbreak. Could a heart keep breaking eternally, or would it just crumble into dust and blow away?
    Petra had loved the earl forever, it seemed. When the wiry thirteen-year-old had ridden over for his Latin lessons and offered a nut brown hobbledehoy six-year-old a ride, she was lost. When he sat by her ailing father, sent her macaroons at school, trusted her with Montravan’s r unning , she loved him the more. Loving Bevin Montford was like loving the hero in a romance novel—from a distance. Bevin was more handsome, more dashing, more caring than any hero—and just as unattainable for a poor vicar’s daughter who had to earn her living.
    Petra looked over to her wardrobe door, where the burgundy robe hung, the slippers placed neatly on the floor in front, almost as if the earl would walk into her bedroom at any minute. And pigs would not just fly; they’d start teaching astronomy at Oxford. Earls did not look at impoverished nobodies except in charity. And charity was cold comfort indeed when a heart ached for a much warmer touch.

4
    White’s was fairly thin of company that evening, most of the members having already left town for their far-flung estates or country parties. Some young sprigs were in the dining room, drinking their suppers, and a few of the old gents were snoring in the reading room with newspapers over their faces. After handing his hat and gloves to the footman at the door, Montravan looked into the game room for his own particular cronies, gentlemen past their callow youth but not yet settled into sedentary respectability. They were more Corinthians than Tulips, and generally well breeched enough to pursue avidly the two favorite pastimes of the more raffish section of the aristocracy: wagering and womanizing. Happily there were enough of Lord Montravan’s set at the club tonight for a decent hand of whist and congenial conversation. Or so he thought.
    After the current war news, talk turned to homely Lady Throckmorton and her handsome footmen, thence to the new bareback rider at Astley’s Amphitheatre: her bare legs, her nearly bare chest. Then Lord Coulton came in, rubbing the chill out of his hands.
    “Ah, the very gentlemen I was hoping to see,” he said, fitting his large frame into a chair near Montravan and the others. “I have just consigned my fate to River Tick and need your heavy purses to bail myself out. Cards, anyone?” A wide grin split his freckled face as he started to deal. The earl called for another bottle.
    “’Tis the least I can do for a friend who is so badly dipped,” he told his other companions. “Besides, the cognac might dim that avaricious gleam in our Goliath’s eye, so we poor Davids have a chance.”
    For a while the only sounds were softly spoken bids and answers, the slap of cards on the baize, and the clink of glasses. Then the group of younger men strolled in from the dining room, carrying their bottles and glasses. Most sauntered; a few staggered. They took up chairs at a nearby table but immediately started arguing about the stakes. One of the players at Bevin’s game glared in their direction, without affecting their raucous noise in the slightest. Finally Viscount Coulton put his cards on the table, stood up to his considerable height, and