Salt Hendon Collection by Lucinda Brant

Author:Lucinda Brant [Historical Romance Boxed Set]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: regency, romance, boxed-set, georgian, historical, drama, suspense, humor, marriage of convenience, box, boxed, set, Salt Hendon
ISBN: 9780987375285
Publisher: Sprigleaf
Published: 2017-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

FOUR

INSIDE THE SOUTH AUDLEY Street townhouse, Sir Antony stood transfixed, as if cemented to the base of the staircase, not even a facial muscle dared twitch as his sister swept down the staircase in greeting.

He had a second of joy. Her beauty had not diminished with time and she was just as radiant as ever. Her cosmetics had been carefully applied and her auburn hair dressed in the latest fashion, swept up off her neck, two fat auburn ringlets threaded with pearls and a pale ribbon caressing her bare neck. His instinct was to draw her close, to hug her to him, to feel the warmth of a sisterly embrace. It was a hollow expectation, and a foolish one. Not only had Diana never embraced him, but for all her outward beauty and appearance of goodness, she was as cold as the marble under his feet.

In his wildest imaginings he would never have supposed this outcome: That after escaping her castle incarceration she would dare to hide in plain sight. Yet, here she was, with her coterie of female friends, firmly fixed in his townhouse, her social calendar under full sail, and looking as sane as the next person.

What genius!

What supreme audacity!

What ego.

How was he to answer to it? What was he to say and do?

He was in the middle of a nightmare not of his making.

He knew that just below the surface of her beautiful façade there lurked a monster capable of great cunning—and great evil. Yet these women and the wider world, indeed most of her family, were ignorant of just whom they were dealing with. To limit family scandal and protect the innocent, the handful of people who did know the real Diana, and of what horrors she was capable, had taken a vow of silence. They also agreed on the fiction Salt concocted to explain Lady St. John’s sudden disappearance from Polite Society and estrangement from her children. Her health had broken under the strain of Salt’s marriage and she was sent to the Continent to recover. When she would return, no one knew and out of deference to the then newly-married Earl and Countess of Salt Hendon and their family, no one asked.

It was as if Diana St. John had vanished from the face of the earth…

Now, here she was! Such a healthy and lively Diana, Lady St. John, and such an implacable force that Sir Antony went cold and felt faint. His former self, the one who had found solace and oblivion in a bottle of good claret—the habitual drunkard—would have bowed to his sister’s force majeure. The habitual drunkard could easily convince himself that such a vastly superior intellect, with all the cunning of a Machiavelli and the doggedness of a beagle with his snout in a rabbit hole, was beyond his derisory capabilities. Constant inebriation permitted him to absolve himself from care and responsibility. Others, meaning his cousin the Earl, more capable and determined than he, could better deal with the problem of his sister.

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