Dangerous to Love by Elizabeth Thornton

Author:Elizabeth Thornton [Thornton, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-56733-8
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 1994-07-09T07:00:00+00:00

Captain Mosley was expounding to the passengers, who had the honor to sit at his table, on the vital importance of Charles Town as a seaport. It was all very interesting, but young Mrs. Jaffe could not prevent her eyes drifting to the gentleman who sat directly across the table. They would dock in a day or two, and it was highly unlikely that she would ever set eyes on Mr. Raynor again. He had business in London, whilst she and her husband had sold up and were returning to their home in Devon. Sighing regretfully, she raised her wine glass to her lips and tried to pay attention to the conversation. She would far rather hear of Mr. Raynor and his purpose in coming to England.

Her husband had told her the little he knew of the gentleman. It was not an unusual story. Mr. Raynor had come to the Carolinas two years before to escape some scandal in England. What he had seen of the flourishing young colony had intrigued him and he had immediately begun improving his plantation and using the profits from it to invest in other enterprises. He was a man of influence as well as a wealthy landowner. In Charles Town, he was an intimate of Governor Glen and there was speculation that soon he might be persuaded to let his name stand for the Commons House of Assembly.

Even without her husband’s commentary, she would have known that Mr. Raynor was a man to be reckoned with. He had that look. It wasn’t that he was forbidding. Indeed, his manner toward her had always been most gentlemanly, most respectful. Nevertheless, she sensed the steel in him. When this gentleman set his mind on something, nothing would stand in his way. It was, she supposed, the reason he had risen to prominence so quickly. Many gentlemen with his advantages let them slip through their fingers, gaming away their fortunes or wasting them on riotous living.

This thought reminded her of some of the gossip that circulated among the married ladies on board, ladies who moved in Mr. Raynor’s circles in Charles Town. According to Mrs. Simmons, his affaires with a certain class of women were notoriously well-known the length and breadth of South Carolina. There were duels, and rumors of drunken orgies in the slave quarters, and debauchery too shocking to detail. When she had asked her husband about it, he had chastised her for being interested in things no gently bred lady should know about. That was the trouble with husbands. Their sense of propriety forced their wives to be devious in ferreting out information.

“I cannot credit,” she had declared, with a fair show of indignation, “that the governor would welcome such a man into the ranks of his supporters.”

Her husband had wavered for a moment, then carefully explained that gentlemen did not set much store by how many mistresses a man kept, or how many duels he fought, so long as he was a man of honor.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.