Regina Scott Read Online Free Page B

the finest estate in the upper valley before the colonel took ill. All it needs is a little attention.”
    Trevor glanced around the stable. Stalls just like the one in which he stood stretched away on either side. The place would hold a dozen horses and several carriages when full, with room for coachman and grooms in the quarters upstairs. Now the darkness surrounded them like smoke, and she thought she could hear the scurrying of tiny feet not far away.
    “I suspect,” he said with a sigh, “that it also needs an influx of cash.”
    She dimpled at him. “Well, that goes without saying.”
    He closed his eyes a moment. Was he praying? Did it truly look so awful to him that he had to reach to God for help? She wanted to touch him, strokeaway the worried lines from his eyes and mouth. But that was not her place. All she could offer was encouragement.
    “It will look brighter in the morning,” she murmured. “I promise.”
    He opened his eyes and regarded her. Perhaps it was a trick of the lantern light, but his jade eyes seemed to have warmed. She felt warm just gazing into them. The vast stable was suddenly too small, too intimate. She swallowed and turned for the door. “I’ll just show you to the George now, shall I?”
    She took a deep breath to steady herself and glanced back in time to see him swing himself easily into the saddle. “If it’s in your village, I’ll find it. Have your father send down my shaving kit. And tell him I expect a full report tomorrow morning in the library at ten.”
    With a cluck of encouragement, the magnificent Sir Trevor and his equally magnificent horse disappeared into the night.
     
    An influx of cash. Trevor shook his head as Icarus picked his way down the graveled drive. Gwen Allbridge smiled as if finding money was an easy matter. He supposed it would be for many a gentleman. But she couldn’t know that he was a gentleman in title only.
    It had ever been this way. He had been born outside of wedlock, to a mother who was considered no lady. Yet his mother, his father, the accountantswho arranged for him to attend the best schools, to wear the finest clothes, expected him to act the gentleman. Nay, they demanded it of him.
    Gentlemen did not sully their hands with work; gentlemen lived off the income from their estates or their shrewd investments in the ’Change. But when you were born to neither estate nor investment, when the money was provided merely to educate, clothe and feed you while you were a lad, how were you supposed to get on?
    He’d found a way, but few respected it. If the determined Miss Allbridge knew how he’d earned his meager income and his baronetcy, he had little doubt she would be far less eager to welcome him to her village.
    But she wasn’t the only one so eager, he quickly learned. He located the George easily enough: a two-story, whitewashed building with black shutters and the picture of the king swinging merrily from the sign over the red front door. The inn was located in the heart of the little village, surrounded by tile-roofed cottages and two glass-fronted shops, all dark for the night.
    The tall, long-nosed innkeeper was all politeness as he made sure Icarus was rubbed down and stabled. He easily agreed to have Trevor take a room for the night on the upper floor. That is, until he read Trevor’s entry in the great register book lying open on a high table near the entry.
    “Sir Trevor Fitzwilliam of Blackcliff?” Hesquinted down at the words in black ink on the wide-lined book, then jerked up his head on his long neck like a stork checking for foxes. “Mrs. Billings—do you hear that? We are housing the new master of Blackcliff!”
    Only three men lounged in the public room behind Trevor, but he could hear them muttering, the scrape of a chair as someone rose as if to get a better look at him. The pudgy innkeeper’s wife waddled from the steaming kitchen, wiping her hands on her wrinkled apron. Her brown eyes were bright as sugared