Sheri Cobb South Read Online Free

the man about whom she had heard so much.
    “Excuse me,” she called to the crossing sweeper plying his trade on the corner, “do you know which one of these houses belongs to a Mr. Ethan Brundy?”
    “Aye, miss, that I do,” he replied, and turned back to his broom.
    With a little huff of annoyance, Polly sacrificed another coin to the cause.
    “That would be number twenty-three,” he said, jerking a thumb in the right direction with one hand while he pocketed her hard-earned pay with the other.
    Polly thanked him curtly and set off down the street in the direction he had indicated. When she reached her destination, however, the stately pilastered facade gave her pause. This was not the sort of building one might expect to house a weaver. Mr. Brundy must be very, very wealthy indeed. Why, the Prince Regent himself would feel at home in such a house!
    Squaring her shoulders, she marched gamely up the steps, lifted the brass knocker, and let it fall. A moment later the door opened to reveal a daunting figure in black coat and knee breeches. He was older than she had imagined, but in all other aspects, his appearance was every bit as forbidding as she had been led to believe.
    “Mr. Brundy?” she asked uncertainly.
    “My name is Evers,” the man informed her with great dignity. “I am the butler.”
    “Oh,” said Polly, quite cowed. In retrospect, she should have known that the wealthy Mr. Brundy would not answer his own door, but then she knew little of ton ways beyond what she had seen in Mr. Minchin’s shop and read between the pages of the books on his shelves. “I—I should like to see Mr. Brundy, if you please.”
    Evers’s seasoned eye assessed the visitor at a glance. She did not look like a lady of Quality, if her dark stuff gown and frumpy bonnet were anything to judge by, and yet four months in Mr. Brundy’s employ had taught him not to set too much store by appearances. Opening the door wider, he bade the visitor enter.
    * * * *
    Had she paused in her negotiations with the crossing sweeper long enough to cast a glance back up the Square, Polly might have witnessed Mr. Ethan Brundy, mill owner and canny investor on ‘Change, entering his Grosvenor Street domicile. Once inside, he surrendered his hat and gloves to the butler and inquired after his wife. Upon being informed that he might find her ladyship in the dining room, he betook himself up the stairs in this direction.
    It had been five years since he had inherited the mill that had made him, at the tender age of three-and-twenty, one of England’s wealthiest men, but when he took the time to reflect upon the turns his life had taken, he still marveled. He had been only nine years old when Mr. Brundy, requiring cheap labor for his mill, had plucked him from the workhouse, and so his memories of that bleak existence were perhaps mercifully vague. Nevertheless, he had clear recollections of being always hungry, always cold, and, although surrounded by persons of all ages as miserable as himself, always alone. Now he had as much as he wanted to eat, whenever he wanted to eat it (small wonder that his tailor bemoaned the fact that Mr. Brundy’s waist was not so narrow as fashion dictated!), he kept fires burning in every room which he might conceivably wish to enter, and he slept—more often than not—with the former Lady Helen Radney in his arms. The thought made him impatient for nightfall, and he quickened his pace as he climbed the stairs.
    Although it was too early for dinner, he did indeed find his wife in the dining room, arranging flowers in a bowl for the center of the table. As her back was to the door, she was unaware of his presence, and he, seizing upon the advantage of surprise, slipped up behind her and wrapped his arms about her waist.
    “I’m ‘ome, ‘elen,” he said, nuzzling her neck.
    Lady Helen, displaying the stoicism for which she had been praised that very morning, submitted to this assault on her person with a