Read The Adventuress: HFTS5 for Free Online

years older than the earl.
    “And yet, I was under the impression, Mary, that it was you who reminded my lady-love of the peculiar nature of my late wife’s death.”
    “Stuff! Would I do such a thing?”
    “Your son, Clarence, stands to inherit my title and estates if I do not wed and have children of my own. I am warning you, Mary, do not interfere again.”
    Mrs. Otterley buried her dry eyes in a handkerchief and gave a very stage-like sob. “That my own brother should accuse me of such a thing! Poor Clarissa. How can you forget her so soon?”
    “Easily,” said the earl brutally. “Clarissa, my lovely wife, has been dead these past eight years.”
    “I cannot understand what went wrong with that marriage,” said his sister, giving up pretending to cry. “Clarissa was so beautiful, so dainty, so much a lady …”
    “And childless,” said the earl, “so naturally you approved of her. I did not talk to you about my marriage at the time, Mary, and I have no intention of talking about it now. I had enough of a cross to bear with those Sussex servants at Whitecross Hall. They tattled and gossiped so much, it was a wonder I was not hanged outside Newgate. I detest malicious gossips, and my detestation of all servants makes me reluctant to set about finding a place in London. The servants I have now in Sussex are hand-picked and as close-mouthed as clams. They are all good country people, unlike the last lot, who were mostly imports from London.”
    “No girl will marry you,” said Mrs. Otterley. “You are too hard and unfeeling.”
    “Any woman will marry me for my title and fortune, provided you do not turn up on her doorstep with tales of murder. I do not look for love, simply for good breeding and refined manners.”
    “All I have to say is,” began his sister, but then she broke off as an elegant exquisite was ushered into the earl’s suite of rooms. “Oh, here’s that poisonous fribble. I’m off.”
    As the door slammed behind her, the earl turned to the new arrival with a sweet smile and said, “Sit down, Fitz. You are a sight for sore eyes. Nothing endears me more to you than your ability to rout my Friday-faced sister.”
    Mr. Jason Fitzgerald dropped languidly into an armchair opposite the earl. He was a tall, thin man and, like the earl, in his early thirties. He had very fair hair, which was teased and backcombed up on top of his head. His collars were judged to be the highest in London and so ferociously starched that the points left little red marks on his cheekbones. Despite his thin body, he had a pair of long, well-shaped muscular legs which were that morning encased in skin-tight pantaloons of bright yellow. His face was highly painted. He had a noble forehead and a proud nose, but his receding chin was his private despair and he disguised it by having an intricately tied cravat rising up in front to shield it. A shrapnel wound in his back had put an end to his army career and often made walking and dancing an agony, but he covered up his pain with his usual mask which was that of a frivolous dandy, and only the earl knew how much of a mask it was and how Fitz longed to be fit enough to re-enlist.
    “I have found a house for you,” said Fitz languidly. “Take you there now, if you like. Pretty place. No servants. Hire your own.”
    “Where is it?”
    “Park Lane.”
    “Nobody admits to living in Park Lane!”
    “You are behind the times. They do now. Come. I’ll show you.”
    Park Lane, the erstwhile Tyburn Lane of dubious repute, though still unevenly paved and patched with leftover material from building sites, had rapidly improved its social standing with the disappearance of the mobs who used to make their way along it to the gallows to watch the public hangings. Now the public hangings were performed outside Newgate Prison in the City. Until a very short time ago, the residents of Park Lane had kept a high wall between themselves and the street, having their mansions