The Babe and the Baron Read Online Free Page B

even fashionable clothes could ever turn her into a beauty. Ceci was the beauty of the family—Ceci, already the apple of her parents' eyes, who had caught the heir to a dukedom in the middle of their shared Season. If only Grandmama had not died the year before, so that Laura might have had a Season to herself instead of competing with her younger sister...
    She shook her head vigorously. No more 'if only's. In her present situation, her mediocre looks were a positive advantage, she told herself with determined cheerfulness. She had been foolish to fear that Cousin Gareth had a dishonourable motive for whisking her away to his den, even if, as she suspected, he had not guessed she was pregnant. He would have no eyes for her—doubtless the loveliest ladies in the land sought his company.
    Among them Maria. Who was Maria?
    Laura sank down on her bed, sadly crushing the shabby gowns she had laid there. Why had it never crossed her mind that Lord Wyckham might be married?
    Not that it made a great deal of difference to a five-month pregnant widow, except that Lady Wyckham might very well resent her arrival, pretty or no. She wished she had never agreed to go to Llys Manor, but she started folding her clothes for packing. She had agreed, and Freddie's cousin had gone to considerable trouble for her. For a month or two she could endure being an unwanted poor relation, then she would come home to have the baby.
    * * * *
    “I'm going to ride the next stage,” announced Rupert, as the carriage pulled into the yard of the Wheatsheaf at St. Neots. He opened the door, stepped down, then turned to address his brother. “Gareth, it's about time you warned Cousin Laura of what awaits her at Llys, and I don't want to be around when she throws her bandbox at you.” With a grin, he closed the door and disappeared.
    Laura glared at Gareth. Though she realized Rupert was joking, Gothick fancies traipsed through her head. “Just what does await me at Llys?” she enquired grimly.
    “Nothing so dreadful,” he protested, on the defensive.
    “The house is falling down?”
    “It's in excellent repair.”
    “It is set on a crag in the midst of gloomy mountains with the nearest neighbours a day's ride off?”
    “It's on a gentle hillside with a superb view—admittedly of the Welsh mountains—a mile from the village and ten from Ludlow, a pleasant market town.”
    She tried to avoid the one question she really wanted to ask. “Your butler is a tall, cadaverous individual given to ominous predictions of imminent disaster?”
    Gareth began to smile. “Lloyd is short, stout, and cheerful.”
    “The housekeeper is addicted to strong drink?”
    “Mrs. Lloyd is a Methodist. They have both been with the family all their lives.”
    “The family...?”
    “The family.” He grimaced. “It is to the family, of course, that Rupert referred.”
    “I'm afraid your wife will not be pleased—”
    “My wife! I am not wed, nor like to be.”
    Laura's heart suddenly grew lighter. She relaxed against the luxurious olive-green velvet squabs as the carriage started off again. “So Maria is not Lady Wyckham.”
    “Heaven forbid! I mean, no. Maria Forbes is the daughter of one of my uncles, a widow like yourself but with three children.”
    Laura gathered from his gloomy voice that he was not over fond of the children. Her resolve to leave Shropshire before her baby's birth strengthened, though it had wavered when she learned that no affronted wife awaited her.
    “Mrs. Forbes makes her home at Llys?” she asked.
    “Unfortunately Uncle Henry, her father, is a diplomat with no fixed abode in England.”
    “I daresay Mrs. Forbes runs the household and acts as your hostess.”
    “No, my Aunt Antonia does that, my mother's sister. She brought us all up.”
    His mother had died when he was young, then. Laura's memories of her own mother were not such that she could sympathize, so she evaded the subject. “All? Ah, yes, Cousin Rupert mentioned another