Lord of Scoundrels Read Online Free

believe Number Three was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Lord Fangiers is four and thirty years old. The family says it’s embarrassing.”
    “Well, it ain’t exactly dignified, at her age.”
    “She’s not dead, Bertie. I don’t see why she should behave as though she were. If she wishes to wed a pot boy, that’s her business.” Jessica gave her brother a searching look. “Of course, it would mean that her new husband would have charge of her funds. I daresay that worries everybody.”
    Bertie flushed. “No need to look at me that way.”
    “Isn’t there? You appear rather worried yourself. Maybe you had an idea she’d bail you out of your difficulties.”
    He tugged at his cravat. “Ain’t in difficulties.”
    “Oh, then I must be the one. According to your man of business, paying your present debts will leave me with precisely forty-seven pounds, six shillings, threepence for the remainder of the year. Which means I must either move in with aunts and uncles again or work. I spent ten years as unpaid nanny to their brats. I do not intend to spend another ten seconds. That leaves work.”
    His pale blue eyes widened. “Work? You mean, earn wages? ”
    She nodded. “I see no acceptable alternative.”
    “Have you gone loony, Jess? You’re a girl . You get shackled. To a chap who’s plump in the pocket. Like Genevieve done. Twice. You got her looks, you know. If you wasn’t so confounded picky—”
    “But I am,” she said. “Fortunately, I can afford to be.”
    She and Bertie had been orphaned very young, and left to the care of aunts, uncles, and cousins barely able to support their own burgeoning broods. The family might have been comfortably well off if there hadn’t been so very many of them. But Genevieve descended from a line of prolific breeders, especially of males, and her offspring had inherited the talent.
    That was one of the reasons Jessica received so many marriage offers—an average of six per annum, even at present, when she ought to be on the shelf, wearing a spinster’s cap. But she’d be hanged before she’d marry and play brood mare to a rich, titled oaf—or before she’d don dowdy caps, for that matter.
    She had a talent for unearthing treasures at auctions and secondhand shops, and selling same at a tidy profit. Though she wasn’t making a fortune, for the last five years she had been able to buy her own fashionable clothes and accessories, instead of wearing her relatives’ castoffs. It was a modest form of independence. She wanted more. During the past year, she had been planning how to get more.
    She had finally saved enough to lease and begin stocking a shop of her own. It would be elegant and very exclusive, catering to an elite clientele. In her many hours at Society affairs, she’d developed a keen understanding of the idle rich, not only of what they liked but also of the most effective methods of drawing them in.
    She meant to start drawing them in once she’d hauled her brother out of the mess he’d got himself into. Then she’d see to it that his mistakes never again disrupted her well-ordered life. Bertie was an irresponsible, unreliable, rattlebrained ninny. She shuddered to imagine what the future held for her if she continued to depend upon him for anything.
    “You know very well I don’t need to marry for money,” she told him now. “All I need do is open the shop. I’ve selected the place and I’ve saved enough to—”
    “That cork-brained rag-and-bottle-shop scheme?” he cried.
    “Not a rag and bottle shop,” she said calmly. “As I’ve explained to you at least a dozen times—”
    “I won’t let you set up as a shopkeeper.” Bertie drew himself up. “No sister of mine will go into trade.”
    “I should like to see you stop me,” she said.
    He screwed up his face into a threatening scowl.
    She leaned back in the chair and gazed at him contemplatively. “Lud, Bertie, you look just like a pig, with your eyes all squeezed