Barbara Metzger Read Online Free

wear a mask.”
    What Algie was saying was that, if the reason Courtney hadn’t brought the female around was that he was ashamed of her looks, here was an opportunity to put the gossip to rest once and for all.
    “I’ll, ah, have to ask the lady,” Courtney said, clucking to his horses to start before his friends could ask any more questions.
    Damn and blast, Courtney thought as he drove through streets crowded with people going home to supper, now he’d have to go hire himself a mistress. A beautiful mistress, too, to hang on his arm at the Argyle Rooms. But that breed was almost as gossipy as their pedigreed sisters. If he failed to perform after paying for the services, his reputation would be back in the mud. If he did give up his fool’s-gold goals and actually do the deed, he was liable to perform shabbily, from inexperience and lack of enthusiasm. Then he’d just be a laughingstock. Botheration. Besides, his leg was aching and it was snowing. Again.
     

Chapter Three
     
    It was snowing again, oh dear. Kathlyn Partland was already two days late for her new governess position. Now she was lost in London, in the dark, in the snow. Oh dear indeed.
    The hackney drivers must have taken their horses home to get out of the weather, Kathlyn thought, for there were no carriages to be hired. Therefore, if she did not wish to get to Lady Rotterdean’s house in Berkeley Square three days late, she’d have to walk, which didn’t faze her, country girl that she was. The garbled directions from a harassed stableboy did, though, and the unintelligible accents of the linkboys and crossing sweeps. Well, she was bound to come upon a major thoroughfare sooner or later, or someone who spoke the King’s English. Kathlyn shifted her portmanteau to her other hand, pulled the hood of her mantle tighter, and plodded on.
    Lady Rotterdean was sure to understand that none of the delay was Kathlyn’s fault. She had to, for Kathlyn needed this position. She couldn’t go back home, since there was no home back in Cheshire, even if her meager resources could have financed the return journey. The lease on the cottage was expired, not that Kathlyn could have paid the rent after her father died, even if his tiny annuity hadn’t ended. They’d barely managed to make expenses when Papa was earning money tutoring. Mama’s family had been no help, which was no surprise, either. They hadn’t helped when Mama needed doctoring, and they hadn’t helped when she needed burying. Kathlyn had written to her wealthy maternal aunt anyway. She was still waiting for a reply, three months after Papa went to his final reward. Heavens, the mails weren’t that slow. Her own mail coach to London was only two days late, not three months, and that due to blizzards and bandits and Bow Street. Her aunt’s delay was entirely attributable to meanness and miserliness. Kathlyn thanked goodness for the vicar’s wife, who had a sister who sewed altar cloths with a neighbor of Lady Rotterdean, who needed a proper, educated female to be governess to her three daughters.
    Kathlyn Partland was certainly educated, from sitting at so many of her father’s lessons. Transcribing his notes perfected her penmanship, and juggling the household expenses taught her mathematics. As Papa’s eyesight worsened, Kathlyn read to him for hours, history, geography, Latin, and Greek. She was more than qualified to teach three little girls—if she could only find them.
    Kathlyn shifted the valise again. Her clothes and books must be picking up moisture from the snow, for the bag was growing heavier by the minute. Drat the snow, and drat the delay that meant Lady Rotterdean’s coachman wasn’t waiting for Kathlyn at the Swan Inn.
    A tiny seed of resentment grew with the blister on Kathlyn’s palm from the suitcase’s straps. She had sent a note to Lady Rotterdean along with the driver’s message to his dispatcher, explaining the problems and estimating their arrival. The man in