Leslie Lafoy Read Online Free Page A

unfortunately, matters which simply must be dealt with immediately.”
    He should ask her in; discussing personal matters on the front steps was definitely outside the bounds of social protocol. “Such as?” was all he managed to choke out.
    “I am Mrs. Gerald Treadwell,” she began, her smile weak and strained. “Your brother and sister-in-law left me in charge of their affairs. It was to have been a very temporary arrangement, but the circumstances changed. I thought it best to bring what was left of their lives to you. Since your sister-in-law was an only child and orphaned, you are the only living relation of whom I am aware.”
    His brain wasn’t working properly; he heard her words—each and every one of them—but only one out of three had any sort of significant impact. He couldn’t ask her to repeat it all. It wouldn’t make any difference anyway. He considered what he remembered of her little speech. She’d said her name was Treadwell. Mrs. Treadwell. And something about bringing … A dim light flickered in his awareness. Personal effects. She’d brought him Arthur’s and Mary’s personal effects.
    Carden nodded. “Have the boxes or trunks or whatever delivered at my expense.”
    “I’ve already seen to the order and the paying of the costs, Mr. Reeves. They should arrive here within a few hours.”
    He thought that should have concluded their conversation, that with that she should have expressed her condolences one more time and then bid him good day and walked away. But she didn’t. She stood there, watching him with huge blue eyes filled with patient expectation. “Why,” he wondered aloud, “do I sense that our conversation is not yet done?”
    “Perhaps because it isn’t,” she instantly countered. “I have brought your brother’s children home.”
    “Children?” He all but choked on the word. Good God, the woman was better than any professional pugilist he’d ever seen. She hadn’t laid a hand on him and yet he was reeling.
    “Were you not aware that your brother had children?”
    “Arthur and I…” Memories swept over him and with them came the usual flood of anger. In the span of a single heartbeat, the cloud numbing his mind was seared away. “Never mind,” he said laconically. “It’s hardly relevant. How many children? And please tell me that there’s a son or two in the litter.”
    It wasn’t either irritation or impatience in her eyes this time; it was anger. She didn’t make the slightest effort to conceal or bank it but instead turned her back to him and crisply nodded. A sudden movement out toward the street caught his attention and drew it past her. There was a rented hack at the curb, the driver apparently sleeping in the box, whip in hand. It had been the opening of the carriage door that had drawn his gaze.
    He watched as a young girl in a ragged dress stepped down onto the public walk. A second girl, slightly smaller, followed on her heels, her skirts too short by half and exposing far too much of her calves to be decent. A third girl—a very little one—jumped two-footed from the carriage and bounded to a halt beside what he could only presume were her older sisters.
    Carden stared at the carriage door and willed a young male—size didn’t matter—to come out of the dark recesses. He was still commanding it when the eldest of the three girls turned back and smartly closed the door on his one and only hope of salvation.
    It was all but official. He was going to become Carden Reeves, the goddamn seventh Earl of Lansdown.

C HAPTER 2
    What doubts Carden might have been able to entertain as to their parentage evaporated as the three girls came to stand beside their nurse on his front steps. They were the very image of Arthur; the same dark eyes fringed with long, thick lashes that had been entirely too feminine on their father, the same full shape of their lower lips, the same way of holding their heads. And damned if they didn’t have Arthur’s