The Wickedest Lord Alive Read Online Free Page A

his tepid intentions toward you, dear Lizzie. Ten to one, his dear mama will throw out a rash or have a spasm or some such thing, and we will not see Mr. Huntley at the ball at all.”
    Clare twirled a stray ringlet around her finger. “Which is a shame, really. For I would give anything to see you hand him his marching orders.”
    Lizzie smiled but said, “Oh, no, how can you be so unfeeling?”
    “If the man can’t pluck up the gumption to propose marriage after five years of mooning over you, he doesn’t deserve my compassion.”
    Lizzie sighed. “I suppose you’re right. The trouble is that he has treated our marriage as a foregone conclusion for so long that everyone in the village believes we’re promised to each other.”
    Clare shrugged. “Then you must tell everyone it’s no such thing.”
    “I would, but no one ever asks me if it’s true,” said Lizzie. “I suppose it is a little strange that I should not wish to marry him. I mean, he is a respectable man of good fortune and not in his dotage. I could scarcely do better.”
    “Bite your tongue, you foolish, foolish girl,” said Clare, swatting Lizzie’s shoulder with her fern frond. “You are a thousand times too good for Mr. Huntley.”
    “You are a true friend to say so,” said Lizzie, conscious there were many in the village who would not share Clare’s view. “But the fact remains that I am a nobody who is firmly on the shelf, and Mr. Huntley is extremely eligible.”
    Of course Lizzie couldn’t marry anyone, eligible or not, for a very good reason.
    Contrary to the deception she had perpetrated on the good people of Little Thurston, Lizzie remembered very well who she was and where she’d come from. Not to mention why she could not wed Mr. Huntley, even if he were to screw his courage to the sticking place and ask.
    She was Lady Alexandra Simmons, daughter of the Earl of Bute. And she was already married to the Marquis of Steyne.
    But the marquis didn’t want her. And she was never going back to her father’s house. Never, ever again.
    *   *   *
    Far later than she’d planned, Lizzie hurried along with her basket and her book to Lady Chard’s. The lady was elderly and astringent, but she shared with Lizzie a penchant for novels, from Waverley to the more lurid Mysteries of Udolpho .
    Lizzie delighted in indulging her talent for drama by reading these aloud to Her ladyship. Today, she’d brought Sense and Sensibility, but her favorite of Miss Austen’s works was Pride and Prejudice . In fact, upon coming to Little Thurston, she’d named herself after its heroine.
    No one else would have guessed that beneath Lady Chard’s snappish demeanor beat the heart of a true romantic. That was the thing about people. There were layers to them you simply didn’t see on the surface. Sometimes you had to excavate a little.
    Lately, the good lady had taken to matchmaking, which was a little tiresome of her.
    Lizzie had not been devoid of suitors over the years she’d been at Little Thurston, but she never treated any of them with more than the friendly courtesy she showed every other gentleman in the district. None had been so smitten nor so egotistical as to believe she’d welcome their addresses.
    Only Mr. Huntley persisted. Not because he was in love with her, although he often gave her ponderous compliments on her propriety of taste or her modest demeanor. Rather, Mr. Huntley wanted to wed her because he thought her upbringing in the vicar’s household stood her in good stead for life as an MP’s wife.
    If only she could bring herself to leap the twin hurdles of her own previous marriage (a high hurdle, that!) and Mr. Huntley’s deadly respectability, marriage to him would have advantages. She could remain in Little Thurston, no longer a spinster but a married woman with her own household. Leaving aside Mr. Huntley’s mother and her gentle tyranny, a young woman in Lizzie’s position couldn’t do better.
    And babies … How she