The Rogue by Katharine Ashe

Author:Katharine Ashe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

PART III

The Bride

Chapter 19

The Most Expensive Bottle in the Place

Baker & Chambliss, Solicitors

London, England

Dylan opted to travel to London with him. “The old curmudgeon won’t let me see my pearl anyway. No cause for me to hang about Edinburgh. And I cannot abide Read’s frosty glowers.”

“He doesn’t glower.” The Duke of Read rarely revealed any feeling. Saint wondered how his vibrant daughter had borne that steely parenting. But then he found himself thinking about her eyes hazy with passion and her hot mouth and her fingers scraping across his back, and forgetting the street he was looking for, and the reason he’d just ridden hundreds of miles, and his own name.

“’Course he does,” Dylan insisted, doffing his hat to a pair of ladies in a passing carriage. “Hope it’s not catching. Wouldn’t like to see you start glowering too, now that you’re going to be a member of the family.” His eyes twinkled.

“Enough already.”

“Saint, my boy, you are the most peculiar fellow I know. Any other man would be shouting for joy that he’d just nabbed the most beautiful girl in Scotland—Britain! And twenty-five thousand pounds in the bargain. What your difficulty is with celebrating your good fortune, I can’t for the life of me see.”

The difficulty with his good fortune was that it was too good. Unbelievably good.

One kiss, and she was to be his? The heiress who had turned away men of rank and fortune? The stunning beauty with a thirst for danger who had engineered a courtship from a man she suspected of crimes so that she could investigate him closer? The passionate woman whose eyes flared with panic even as she reached for him?

He wasn’t ready to celebrate. Not until he understood what in the hell was going on.

“Here’s the place.” Dylan gestured to a modest brass plaque on a door and drew his mount to a halt. “I won’t play coy with you, cousin,” he said less cheerily. “I’m damn glad we’re finally here. Can’t lay old Tor to rest entirely till this is done.”

A narrow man wearing spectacles opened the door to them. “My lord.” He bowed. “Mr. Sterling? I have been expecting you for months.” He led them into an office furnished sparsely but expensively. “Tea?”

“I’ll take a spot of claret, Chambliss,” Dylan said.

The wine was poured, its year and bouquet appreciated, while Saint waited. He hadn’t come here to chat with the solicitor over vintages. But Dylan would be Dylan. And he was in no hurry to learn the truth about his brother’s business ventures. He was doing this only so that he would not bring Constance unexpected trouble.

“Shall we begin?” Chambliss finally said, opening a portfolio across his desk. “Mr. Sterling’s holdings were not terribly diverse, but they were lucrative. I was instructed to withdraw all investments upon notification of his death—”

“He instructed you of this?” Saint asked.

“Five years ago. When Lord Michaels informed me of his death in January, I did as your brother instructed, leaving only one investment active, which is due to pay out in June.

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