Chase, Loretta - Lord Perfect [Book 3 in the Carsington Series] by Lord Perfect

Author:Lord Perfect
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Berkley Sensation

BENEDICT HARDLY NOTICED Maidenhead.

He devoted the first tautly silent moments of travel to trying to revive his famous self-control, gather the remaining shreds of his moral fiber, and evict the alien spirit that had taken possession of him.

Then Mrs. Wingate spoke, and everything went to pieces.

"I think it would be best if we separated in Twyford," she said. "I shall take Olivia to Bristol and attempt to settle the treasure nonsense once and for all."

'To Bristol?" he echoed incredulously. "Did you hit your head in Colnbrook as well as your hand?"

"You and I cannot return to London together," she said, "and you know you must hurry back if you wish to avoid causing a stir. You were to set out for Scotland today, were you not?"

"That is not the point," he said. "The point is, you cannot travel to Bristol alone."

"I shall have Olivia with me," she said.

"You haven't any money," he said.

"I have a little," she said.

"It must be a very little," he said. "When I came to your lodgings, you were preparing to visit the pawnbroker with a sack of your belongings."

"Olivia and I have always traveled with very little money," she said. "It is not as though I plan to hire a post chaise. We can walk."

"To Bristol? Are you mad? That is nearly a hundred miles." He recalled the men's reaction to her provocatively swaying hips at the Kensington tollgate.

She was proposing to swing those hips over a hundred miles of road along which mainly men would be traveling.

"It is out of the question," he said. "I will not permit it."

She turned in the seat to look at him. Her knee bumped his thigh. He set his jaw.

"Where on earth did you obtain the mad idea that you had any say over my doings?" she said. "Oh, never mind. I had forgotten. With you, it is force of habit, ordering everyone about. Very well, my lord. Go ahead and tell me everything I may and may not do. I had rather spend the next few miles laughing than fretting about my exasperating daughter."

"You say she is exasperating, yet you mean to indulge her," Benedict said. "What have you in mind, exactly? A visit to your relatives' mausoleum in the dead of night? I have an interesting picture in my mind of the pair of you in hooded cloaks, Olivia carrying a dark lantern and you with a spade on your shoulder."

"Like many great estates, Throgmorton is open to visitors on certain days," she said. "I shall take her to the mausoleum and let her see how scrupulously the grounds are tended. She will see for herself that, had any treasure been buried there, the gardeners or men making repairs would have found it ages ago. After that, perhaps we shall amuse ourselves looking for smugglers' caves."

"In other words, you do not mean to return to London for some time." He ought to be glad. He would not be tempted to hunt for her when he returned from Scotland.

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