Desire Becomes Her by Shirlee Busbee

Author:Shirlee Busbee
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Published: 2012-05-23T16:00:00+00:00

On that same Thursday morning, Simon woke shortly after the conversation between Gillian and Sophia with his mouth tasting like the bottom of a swine pen. He’d had his reservations about accepting Padgett’s invitation, and after last night’s trip to The Ram’s Head, the reasons for his reservations had been confirmed. Padgett and Stanton were definitely not men he wished to call friends. He held the same opinion of that insufferable Canfield, and as for Townsend ... His lips thinned. Townsend might be Emily’s cousin, but the man was a fawning weasel, and if he had to spend another night in the company of any one of those four men, he’d be hanged for murder.

Not eager to rise, he lay there staring into space, his thoughts on the previous day ... and night. The day had been pleasant enough. The introduction to Broadfoot had gone well. He grinned. And for once his lordship actually had a decent animal for sale. The bay stallion was nearly everything Broadfoot had claimed the horse to be, and a deal was quickly struck. By the time they left Broad View for Stanton’s house in the late afternoon, Padgett was the new owner of prancing bay stallion.

And after that I should have bolted for Windmere, Simon reflected sourly. There had been no reason for him to stay another night at Stanton’s place or to accompany Padgett and Stanton to The Ram’s Head last night, but for reasons that escaped him, he had.

He frowned, thinking about last night. It had been ... interesting. Not the drinking or the ruinous gambling, he’d seen that in London often enough to be inured to it, but the relationship between the four men ... and Nolles had caught his attention.

Canfield had been clearly surprised to see Padgett and Stanton, but Simon had the impression that Townsend and Nolles had been expecting the other two men. Now how was it, he wondered as he lay there, that Townsend and Nolles appeared to have been aware of Padgett and Stanton’s arrival in the area, but Canfield had not?

His frown deepened. Though Padgett and Nolles acted as if meeting for the first time, Simon couldn’t shake the feeling that they knew each other very well, which led him to consider the common denominator between two such divergent individuals: Tom Joslyn.

He didn’t like the direction his thoughts were leading him. His brother Tom may have been Nolles’s main backer, but that didn’t mean that his brother had been the only one to press money into Nolles’s hand. If he’d had to name one person as Tom’s best friend, it would be Padgett. So had Padgett been investing in Tom’s smuggling operation? More importantly, had Padgett stepped into Tom’s shoes?

Simon’s eyes narrowed as he played back in his mind the events of last night. He wasn’t much of a gambler, but he’d lay money that Padgett, Stanton, Canfield, Townsend and Nolles were involved in some sort of enterprise that wouldn’t bear close scrutiny, and he had a fair notion precisely what that enterprise was: smuggling.

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