Read A Perfect Gentleman for Free Online

cousins to put up at a hotel.”
    “Oh, but I could not leave you, Aubrey. You would have retired to the country with your horses and your sheep and your account books. You’d have become a hermit, forgetting how to be gay. Then one day you would realize you were all alone, and you would have married a milkmaid or a shepherdess. I could not let you do that, could I?”
    Gwen wouldn’t accept another husband because she would not abandon Stony, and here he’d stayed in London because he couldn’t abandon his father’s wife. How absurd, Stony thought, and how typical of tenderhearted Gwen. But what if she had truly cared for one of her suitors but had remained a widow for his sake? Devil take it, he felt guilty enough not providing her with jewels and furs. Had he kept her from finding her heart’s content?
    He stepped closer, took up her hand and squeezed it, then tilted her chin so she had to look up at him. “Tell me truly, Gwen, was there a gentleman you would have accepted if you were free to choose? One whom you regret turning down?” If the fellow wasn’t already married, Stony would have him on his knees in Gwen’s parlor before the gudgeon knew what happened to him. “One that you could love?”
    She patted his cheek, then frowned, for he had not shaved yet. “Silly boy, you must know I would have seen you married by hook or by crook if I had found a gentleman I was that desperate to wed. But no, I never met a man I liked half as well as your father.”
    “What, an old reprobate who gambled away your dowry, as well as my mother’s and his own inheritance, on horses and the Exchange and every mad scheme that came along? He left you with nothing.”
    “He left me with you. And he was so good to me for the years we had together. I did not have to marry him, you know. My parents were not very well off, but they were not pushing me to make a match that Season. No, I chose your father for myself, and I never regretted that decision. I know we were irresponsible with the money that should have come to you, but we had such good times until….”
    Stony reached for his handkerchief before he realized he’d already given it to her. He usually carried two, for such emergencies, but was not fully dressed yet.
    “You are very much like him, you know,” Gwen said, dabbing at her eyes.
    Stony leaped back, stung. “I am?”
    “Yes, you have the same ability to make whatever woman you are with feel like the only woman you wish to be with, if that makes sense.”
    It did, after a moment. “But he meant it. Father didn’t need a young bride. He already had an heir, and he had his wom— That is, he was not bored or lonely. He truly loved you.”
    “I know. That’s why none of those other gentlemen measured up. And that is what I was always waiting for you to find with your next dance partner, the next pretty passenger in your curricle.”
    “The next heiress?”
    “Why not?”
    * * *
    Why not? Because he already disliked the woman, sight unseen. Her manner was brusque and authoritative, as though she were used to having her every command obeyed on the instant. Arrogance, that was what Stony deduced from Miss Kane’s short note, and arrogance was his least favorite trait in a female. Why, the very brevity of the message was somehow condescending, as if she were too busy with matters of more serious concern to be bothered with a mere paid companion.
    Lord Wellstone , it began, without a courtesy salutation. That lack alone spoke more than any words could have.
    I wish to engage your services to escort my aunt and myself about London. Well, that was to the point. Trust a banker’s daughter to get to the bottom line in a hurry. The woman obviously did not believe in subtlety, veiling her request in pretenses of prior friendship or mutual acquaintanceship or some such to preserve his pride. Obviously his dignity held no place in her reckoning.
    Worse, she had included a handsome fee, as if he’d already accepted.