Scoundrel Ever After (Secrets and Scandals) Read Online Free

away earlier.
    When she reached the window, he’d already started climbing down the tree. He grunted with the movement and she realized she still didn’t have a bandage for him. She grabbed a second cravat and followed him out the window. Surely she had a minute to tell her grandfather she was leaving . . . But he’d try to stop her and she wanted to go. She needed to go. This adventure was exactly what she wanted, what she’d been looking for, and it would irrevocably change her life. A life she barely tolerated.
    She heard a muffled sound and looked outside. Mr. Locke or Jagger or whatever his name was had fallen to the ground. He needed her. Grandfather had the staff—Audrey refused to think anything bad had happened to them—and Mr. Locke had no one at present.
    Audrey thanked God for her above-average height as she reached for the tree and swung herself out the window. It was a challenging move, but she managed to get herself onto the branch, though she dropped her coat, hat, and the cravats. The white linen fluttered to the ground in a graceful series of swaying arcs.
    “Throw that bag down!” he called up to her. “It’s in the tree.”
    Audrey’s foot nudged a bag tucked into a small hollow between the branches. She picked it up, heard the jingle of coin, and dropped it next to him on the ground. Then she shimmied her way down the tree, grateful that she was, indeed, dressed like a man. The disguise would also help, but she’d forgotten the wig she usually wore over her dark brown curls.
    By the time she reached the base of the tree, Mr. Locke had righted himself and had slung the bag over his uninjured shoulder. He was also armed with a truncheon, which he must’ve left outside before coming up. Why had he climbed to her room in the first place?
    “Let’s go.” He took off across the garden, moving much more efficiently than he had in the last several minutes. Maybe the fall had done him good.
    Audrey plucked up her coat and pulled it on. Then she shoved the hat on her head and stuffed the cravats into the pockets of the coat. She ran after him, stopping when she reached the stone wall separating her grandfather’s small rear garden from the alley that led to the Berkeley mews.
    Mr. Locke turned and looked at her. The dull light of the half-moon offered just enough illumination for her to see his shadowed features. “Can you climb the wall unassisted? I’m not in much shape to help you.”
    She nodded. “I’ll be fine. But can you do it? Tell me how I can help.”
    The wall was six feet tall, but there were foot and handholds in the rock.
    “I’ll go first,” he said. He handed her the bag and truncheon. “Hold these, and then toss them over when I get to the other side.”
    “Please be careful.”
    He hesitated briefly, his gaze inscrutable in the near darkness. Then he turned and climbed over the wall, far more easily than she would have imagined possible in his currently wounded state.
    “Throw the bag and the truncheon!” he called.
    She tossed the club first, heard it hit the ground. Then the bag, but it made a different sound, as if he’d caught it. She tried to find the same hand and footholds he had, but her efforts took longer. When she finally pulled herself up and over the top of the wall, she was breathing heavily. She swung her body down against the other side and tried to find a foothold, but a hand on her buttocks surprised her. She squealed and let go, falling to the ground feet first.
    She spun about, ready to take Mr. Locke to task for touching her in such an intimate fashion, but bit the reprimand back. What did she expect? She was taking off on a midnight adventure with a man she barely knew. An adventure she’d tried and failed to execute two years ago.
    Excitement thrummed through her along with a hundred questions. “Now what?”
    “You follow me and keep quiet.” He turned, the bag slung over his shoulder once more, and rotated the truncheon in his