Read No Marriage of Convenience for Free Online Page A

Aggie’s dismissal would mean Nan had probably fled to her mother’s cheap flat in St. George’s Fields. Riley added to her list of things to do this afternoon a trip to Southwark, where she’d have to engage in a great deal of bribing to entice the greedy but efficient girl to return.
    “We are better off without her!” he declared. “The inconsiderate chit refused to fix my tea before she left.”
    “Well, now that you’ve fired Nan, you’ll have to fetch your own tea,” she shot back.
    At this comment, Aggie sniffed and began sorting the makeup items before him. “Whatever took you so long with our dear patron, Freddie? Now, there’s someone witha presence, someone who knows how to make an entrance. If I’ve told him once, I’ve told him a thousand times, he’d make a fine actor.”
    Riley pulled off her hat and set it down on Aggie’s dressing table covering his pots and paints. “Aggie,” she said slowly. “When was the last time you saw your dear Freddie?”
    Aggie tipped his head as he considered her question, looking her straight in the eye. Riley knew he was trying to gauge her mood and determine whether or not he could get away with lying.
    “Why, it must have been two months ago—before he and his lovely wife went north for a shooting party.” Aggie smiled and went back to studying his reflection in the mirror.
    “Two months,” she asked. “Are you positive?”
    “Quite,” he said, warming to his invented tale. “The dear pair invited me to join them—really, ‘begged’ would be a more apt account, but I explained quite patiently that I had my commitments here. Why? Is he still cross with me for declining?”
    She shook her head. “He uttered not a word of it.”
    “That is because he is a gentleman. Ah, well, next time.” Aggie reached under her hat for a bit of cloth to begin blending a new color into his already rouged features.
    “Now that’s the funny point about all this.” She leaned over his shoulder and stared at his reflection in the mirror. “As it turns out, your dear Freddie is dead. Quite dead, and has been so for seven months!”
    “Oh, my!” Aggie swallowed several times, his great Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.
    “Oh, my, indeed,” she returned. This had been Aggie’s responsibility—to keep tabs on their investor, to ensure he remained happy with their arrangements and see thatthe flow of Ashlin money moved in one direction—into the theatre’s coffers.
    “Seven months, you say?”
    “Seven months.”
    “Oh, my. I don’t see how I could have gotten that so wrong.” He shifted in his seat under her cold gaze. “Now that you mention it, I do remember some such bit of gossip about the Earl of Ashlin and his wife being lost at sea.” He snapped his fingers. “Yes, I remember—their boat overturned and they drowned. Don’t know how I forgot. Quite tragic. Might even make a good play.” He pushed aside her hat, selected a pot of yellow paint.
    Riley frowned back at him. “ Tragic would be a better word to describe our situation.”
    He dismissed her dire words with a wave. “What does it matter whether it is Freddie or his heir? Ashlin men are all reprobates and wastrels. And poor businessmen to boot. You probably had the new Earl kissing the hem of your gown and begging you to take more of his gold.”
    Kissing her hem, indeed! She pulled a chair up next to Aggie’s table. “This Earl may have gained the title, but the rest of his Ashlin inheritance you seem to think is so assured appears to have skipped our new patron. This Lord Ashlin is no reprobate.”
    Though he certainly could be one, Riley thought. She could well imagine the stir he’d cause in his own box on opening night—decked in the latest fashions, his golden brown hair brushed back just so, and his piercing blue eyes scanning the audience.
    Her play about a curate suddenly held a new dimension. The vicar with a past—he’d been a pirate before he’d taken his holy