Read Lady in Green for Free Online Page A

Ross Montclaire was everything proper, and he never received a challenge he didn’t meet.
    Like the bee that goes from flower to flower, the earl visited woman after woman, never bruising the most fragile blossom, never staying longer than the sharing of a sunbeam. He might return, but a single bloom never held him long, much to the rosebuds’ regrets.
    When Lord Gardiner was not paying homage to his ladyloves with his body, he was worshipping them with his pencil. He sometimes got so lost in the beauties of a woman’s form that he forgot her function there in his bed for hours on end. Well, minutes on end. Heirs to earldoms seldom being encouraged to pursue artistic careers, Ross was not as fine a draftsman as more advanced technical training could have made him. Practice, however, made him outstanding in this field, too. The faces of his portraits may have been mere rough likenesses of their models, but, oh, the bodies were perfect in their infinite variations. An unexpected dimple here, a softer fold there; the earl took endless delight in his two favorite pastimes.
    Ross Montclaire, my lord Gardiner, was a rake of the first order. Then his mother came to Town.
    The earl was as close to his mother as most noblemen with one and thirty years in their dish. Like most of his fellows, he’d been sent off with wet nurses, nannies, and tutors, then to boarding schools and university, grand tours and a stint in the army. His later years were spent between house parties, hunting boxes, and bachelor digs, with occasional appearances at his far-flung properties and his seat in Parliament. Which is to say, Gard might be able to sketch his mother’s face from memory. Or he mightn’t. He did love and respect Countess Stephania, naturally. She was his lady mother; he was a proper son.
    “You are the most unnatural child a woman could bear!” the diminutive dowager screeched, beating her much larger son about the head and shoulders with her cane. “Where are my grandchildren? Where is the successor to your title? Do you think I suffered with your great hulk for nine months just so you could become a byword in the gossip columns? That’s not why a woman has children, you dolt! She has them so her husband leaves her alone—from the grave, you jackaninny. Your father is disturbing my rest again!”
    Ross tried not to laugh as he easily fended off his mother’s thrusts. The late earl, Sebastian Montclaire, often cut up his lady’s peace, it seemed, especially when Lady Gardiner was dissatisfied with her allowance, her life as doyenne of Bath society, or, most commonly, her son.
    “Sebastian cannot be happy knowing his heir is a profligate here-and-thereian,” the countess pronounced, finally accepting an Adams chair in the Gold Parlor. “And I deserve to have little ones playing about my skirts.”
    The last thing the countess would have permitted, her son considered as he rang for tea, was sticky fingers on her elegant gros de Naples ensemble. Nevertheless, she seemed determined to make Ross’s life a misery. She was in London, the dowager announced, to make sure he reformed. This time she would see he attended correct gatherings, met suitable females, settled down to begin his nursery.
    “Your past behavior outrages and offends my every proper feeling as a mother,” she continued after Foggarty, the butler, wheeled in the tea tray. Eyeing the almond tarts, macaroons, and poppyseed cake, Lady Stephania slammed her delicate cup down in its saucer. “How can I eat, looking at my only son, knowing he has just recently left some doxie’s arms?”
    So Gard made sure the dowager’s digestion did not suffer. He left. Since his presence seemed to displease the countess, and he was nothing if not a considerate son, the earl stayed as far away from her as possible, which was far indeed in the clubs and stews of London, and the vast reaches of Gardiner House, Grosvenor Square.
    The dowager bribed the servants to discover her