A Notorious Love Read Online Free Page A

her composure. “Not that I cared what Mr. Morgan thought of me one way or the other, you understand.”
    “Of course not.”
    The seeming gentleness in his voice made her scramble to hide her susceptibility. “He wasn’t the kind of man I would find acceptable under any circumstances.”
    A beat of silence. Then Mr. Brennan said coolly, “No, I don’t s’pose he was.”
    Gathering her dignity about her, she strengthened herdefenses against him. “Mr. Morgan’s actions since then have proved I was right to distrust him.”
    “But your sister did not share your suspicions.”
    She sighed. “No, Juliet is young and naive. She dismissed my cautions with scarcely a thought. I’m afraid that my…er…viewpoint on men led her to assume I was unjustifiably biased.”
    “Can’t imagine why she’d think that,” he retorted. “You said you made ‘an alarming discovery’ while following them?”
    She blinked. Lord, he’d been paying close attention. But then, he’d always been one to make a woman feel as if her every word was important. It was another of his little tricks. “On the road, I showed Mr. Morgan’s picture to several people.”
    “You have a picture of him?”
    “Yes. As soon as I found Juliet gone, I sketched an image as best I could from memory. With the aid of my sketch and a miniature of Juliet, I traced their steps and discovered they were headed south for London, not north to Gretna Green. If he intended to marry her, why did he bring her here?”
    “A very good question,” Mr. Brennan said, a frown knitting his brow.
    “My alarm increased when I reached an inn in Aylesbury and found a maidservant who’d met Mr. Morgan before he’d come to Warwickshire.” Her throat constricted. “On his journey from London, he’d stopped there with male companions, whom he’d left behind before heading off for Stratford. These friends of his were rather unsavory characters, however.”
    When she paused, remembering the maid’s full recitation and the awful chill it had sent through her, Mr. Brennan approached the table. “Unsavory? How?”

    “Well, they talked openly about their profession, and...” She lifted an earnest gaze to him. “She was almost certain that they and their friend Mr. Will Morgan are smugglers.”

Chapter 3
Oh, it happened one evening at the playing of ball
That I first met lovely Willie, so proper and tall.
He was neat, fair, and handsome, and straight in every limb;
There’s a heart in this bosom lies breaking for him.
“Lovely Willie,”
anonymous Irish ballad
    D aniel barely stifled his laughter. Smugglers? In Aylesbury, the heart of England? What a daft idea. It was miles from where smugglers worked and traded. And if this Will Morgan was one of them, why travel all the way to Warwickshire to carry off a girl with a moderate dowry, when there were plenty of rich heiresses in London?
    But judging from Lady Helena’s pale face, she believed it to be true. Some young fool eloped with her sister, and she decided at once he was a criminal.
    Morgan did sound like a fortune hunter, however, He’d probably gone to Stratford on legitimate business, when Juliet—and her new dowry—had caught his eye. Perhaps he’d termed himself a captain to sound interesting.
    But fortune hunters and smugglers were different sorts of scoundrel altogether. He fought to hide his amusement. “Why did this maid think all these men were smugglers?”
    “They were rather free with their favors, giving away French goods to all the servants. One of them gave the maid a lace shawl from France and said he’d dodged the excisemen to bring it in.”
    This time Daniel didn’t bother to suppress his laugh. “That’s a young buck’s foolish boast, is all. He probably bought the shawl in London, then spun that tale of adventure to win a warm bed with an easy wench. Men do it all the time.”
    “ You would know more about that than I,” she said, tilting her chin up so high he could see her