Little Coquette Read Online Free Page A

reticule?” Beaumont asked, lifting a drift of white, lacy peignoir and peering into the bandbox.
    “No, she would have taken that with her.”
    “We didn’t find it in the river. Perhaps whoever searched her room got it.”
    Lydia jerked to attention. “What do you mean, searched her room?”
    “Look around you,” he said, pointing at the slipper and the disarranged pillows. “Someone’s been here before us. He didn’t use a key. I asked the clerk if anyone had been asking for Mrs. St. John. With luck, the purse is at the bottom of the river. I’ll go swimming later and dive for it.” As he spoke, he continued rooting in the box. He dumped a pair of blue silk stockings onto the bed and held the box up. The silk lining had been ripped out.
    Lydia just stared in silence. So Beaumont was right. The room had been searched. And she was glad, because her papa had certainly not risked exposure by coming to a public inn to meet his mistress. Someone else was involved in her murder. She suppressed the thought that it might have been an assassin hired by Sir John.
    “What’s the matter, Miss Trevelyn?” Beaumont asked. “You look as if you’d seen a ghost.”
    “Papa didn’t do this,” she said in a small, frightened voice.
    “Good lord, I didn’t think for a minute he had. Er—do you think he might have been involved with Mrs. St. John?”
    “I suppose it’s possible,” she allowed. “He is only human after all, and being away from home so much. ..”
    Beaumont just shrugged his shoulders, relieved that she had accepted the inevitable. “Where there is marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.”
    “But he does love us!”
    “I am sure he loves you, Miss Trevelyn. You must not take this personally. Indeed, I am sure he is fond of your mama, or he would not have been at such pains to conceal from her all these years that he has a mistress. Such women are called a ‘convenience’ for a reason. That is all Mrs. St. John was, a convenience.”
    Lydia latched on to that telling “all these years.” All these years her papa had been deceiving them, and Beaumont had known all about it. Very likely all the gentlemen knew and were in league to hide it from the ladies. She was as close to hating her father as she had ever been to hating anyone. She felt betrayed.
    “Well, she is not so convenient now, is she?” she said angrily. “We must protect Mama at all costs, Beaumont.”
    “I am relieved to see you acting so sensibly,” he said in accents of approval. Say that for Lydia, at least she wasn’t a demmed watering pot. Nor had her prudishness given her such a disgust of her father that she would go running to her mother with the tale. The news had shattered her, but she was taking it like a regular little guy.
    “Of course, we are not sure Mrs. St. John was Papa’s mistress,” she said, darting a hopeful look at him.
    “Actually, we are pretty sure,” he said, wishing it were not so. “She asked for directions to Trevelyn Hall before going out yesterday afternoon. I didn’t want to tell you....”
    He watched as her face began to crumple. Her shoulders sagged in defeat, her head drooped, and her lower lip began to tremble in a way that made Beaumont want to comfort her. He made an instinctive move toward her, but before he touched her, her head came up and he saw her face stiffen.
    “Thank you for telling me, Beaumont. It is not necessary to try to protect me, you know. So, what are we to do?”
    “Find out what the deuce she was doing here, and who killed her.”
    Her chin firmed and a martial light lit her gray eyes. “Yes, that is what I must . Thank you for your help, Beaumont. I shall look after things from here. This is my family’s problem.”
    His lips twitched in amusement, but his brow was furrowed. Lydia trying to straighten out this mess would be like a kitten trying to solve a problem in algebra. He was looking forward to the solving of the puzzle himself and