How I Met My Countess by Elizabeth Boyle

Author:Elizabeth Boyle [Boyle, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Large Type Books, Love Stories
ISBN: 9780061783494
Google: xwHIjwEACAAJ
Amazon: 0061783498
Publisher: Avon
Published: 2009-12-28T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

London, seven years later

Not one to stand on ceremony, Lucy Ellyson Sterling, the Marchioness of Standon, shook off the recollections of her past and pulled the bell at the door before her. She hoped, nay prayed, that whatever matter this summons to meet with the Duchess of Hollindrake was for, it would be less unsettling than running into the Earl of Clifton.

He’s changed, Mariana, she would have told her sister.

But Mariana was gone now, as was her father. Lost to a fever that had swept through their quiet village, taking so many with it.

Taking everything Lucy had known. Upending her life.

As much as Clifton had. For he hadn’t come back to her. Hadn’t written. Not even when Malcolm had been killed.

Lucy pressed her lips together and willed the moisture in her eyes not to give way to tears.

Oh, Mariana, how he looked at me! As if we were barely friends, as if he’d never loved me. As if I was the last person he ever wanted to see.

What had he said? He’d come to Hampstead to thank her father for all he’d done?

And not one word for all she’d done to ensure that he came home? No thanks to her?

Arrogant, ungrateful bastard.

To give herself something to do other than ordering her carriage after the earl and running the man down in broad daylight, she reached for the bell again and would have given it another good yank if, to her surprise, Mr. Mudgett, the duke’s former batman, hadn’t opened the door just then.

“There you are, my lady,” he said in that familiar curmudgeony voice of his. Then the man glanced over her shoulder, his thick brows furrowing together. “Brought the child along, have you?”

Lucy flinched. For unfortunately, as dear as Mickey was to her, he was not all that beloved throughout the Sterling households.

But when she’d agreed to marry Archie Sterling, she’d wrenched a promise from him that she would not have to give up Mickey—that he would never be taken from her. Ever. And so the boy had remained with her, no matter how deplorable the Sterlings found the scandalous situation.

Lucy Ellyson Sterling and that child.

“Ever consider leaving him at the wayside, would you now?” the man asked, looking past her like a watchman instructed to guard against the barbarian horde. Or small, rambunctious lads.

“Of course not, Mr. Mudgett,” she answered, trying to sound not the least bit put out by his less than charitable greeting.

“Well there, you might as well come in and join the lot of them.”

“The lot of—” she began to ask until she saw what he meant.

The marble floor was carpeted in luggage— hatboxes, trunks, traveling bags and cases. And standing on either side of the entry were the other two dowager Lady Standons, Minerva and Elinor.

She didn’t know why she was surprised to see Minerva, for hadn’t Clifton said as much …

“The lady just sent me packing with a flea in my ear.”

Yet here was Elinor as well, and from their corners across the way, neither of the ladies looked none-too-pleased at her arrival.

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