Almost Perfect Read Online Free Page A

Philana’s lips. “Matters have changed a little and to our benefit, I think. I met Lord Ryecroft a few days ago. He mentioned that several of his guests canceled at the last moment due to illness, and he offered us accommodations in his home for the party. I accepted on your behalf.”
    “But I thought the house party didn’t start for another day. Why do we go now?” Cassie asked. She had looked forward to at least one day alone with Philana. It was time she dearly needed to prepare her father for what she meant to do.
    Philana’s smile dimmed into confusion. She glanced between Cassie and Eliza. “What do you mean? If we don’t go this very instant we won’t have time to properly prepare for tonight’s ball.”
    “What ball?” Eliza asked.
    Philana glanced between the girls, still looking confused. “Lord Ryecroft advanced the party’s starting date so he could invite the entire neighborhood to a grand ball. You cannot imagine how excited the whole vale has been over the event. Didn’t you receive the earl’s invitation?”
    Cassie froze, her blood turning to ice and her breath to frigid mist. Her mind’s eye conjured the image of Lord Ryecroft’s invitation. The fine rectangle of paper imprinted with the earl’s family crest lay right where she’d dropped it when she snatched up the deadly urn: at the base of the pedestal in her mother’s drawing room, not far from where they’d left Bucksden’s body.
    There it remained, that is if some Bow Street Runner hadn’t picked it up and thanked his lucky stars for giving him the very location of the one who had murdered the earl.

Lucien Hollier, the only man living who yet retained the ancestral name of the lords who’d ruled Graceton Castle, needed an heir, and this time he’d know for certain that his son wasn’t one of Bucksden’s bastards. Once he had that boy-child, the son on whom to settle his title, Lucien intended to call out Bucksden. One of them would die.
    Dressed in black formal attire, Lucien scanned Ryecroft Castle’s crowded ballroom. The room glittered from its marble floor to the candles and crystals that sparkled on the chandelier. The walls were dressed in rich red and gold leaf, the fireplace trimmed with ornate friezes. People laughed and talked. The music swelled. The dancers, some London elegant, others Border rustic, jigged without prejudice.
    Lucien ignored the men in the room, all except for Jonathan Percy, who was making his way toward the card room accompanied by three burly squires. There was no ignoring Percy, Lucien’s distant cousin and the earl of Westmorland’s acknowledged by-blow. Tonight, the boy wore a bright pink and green waistcoat beneath a coat cut to the highest of fashion.
    Instead, it was the young women, the potential wives, who held Lucien’s interest. Maidens all, they shimmered and glowed in their finery, silk flowers tucked into their head bands, curling wisps of hair brushing at shoulders, their high-waisted, low-cut bodices revealing almost as much as any man liked to see. Lucien dismissed the prettiest of them; he didn’t need another wife capable of attracting other men. It was the plainer women in the room he watched, assessing them one by one as if he could discern by look alone which might prove the most fertile.
    “You’re late, Hollier,” said Adam Devanney, Earl Ryecroft, from behind Lucien. “The evening’s half done.”
    Lucien glanced over his shoulder at his first cousin. They were as close as brothers. Adam and his siblings had been raised at Graceton Castle after the death of their mother, before Devanney’s father had inherited Ryecroft’s title.
    At twenty-nine, four years Lucien’s junior, Devanney was his father’s dark and classically handsome image. His only Hollier trait, inherited from Lucien’s paternal aunt, was his gray eyes. It was Lucien’s fate to resemble his ancestors with his gray eyes, waving golden-brown hair, chiseled cheekbones, and long, straight