Silk And Seduction Bundle 2. Louise Allen

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СКАЧАТЬ everyone else. It was a wonder anybody had actually had the presence of mind to send for him at all.

      ‘I had not yet instructed the staff to organize a watch on her movements,’ admitted the earl. ‘She was too quick for me. It is the way with women like that. You made a serious error of judgement, thinking you could tame Framlingham’s daughter.’

      ‘What?’ Monty whirled round to stare at him. ‘What are you insinuating?’

      ‘Am I not making myself clear enough for you?’ He sneered. ‘I had already caught her trying to sneak down to the stables, the minute you had gone. I put a stop to that, you may be sure. Told her I knew what she was about!’

      Monty shook his head impatiently. ‘Midge gave me her word she would not go riding—’

      ‘Not four-legged beasts, perhaps. But there are other attractions to be found in the stables for women like her.’

      It was all Monty could do not to fly at the dirtyminded old man, casting aspersions on Midge’s character, with servants present, too! Clenching his fists, he growled, ‘Do you mean to tell me you accused her of plotting to seduce one of the grooms? Is that it? I would not have thought even you could stoop so low.’

      The earl collapsed into his chair, his face growing pale. ‘You should have been here to keep her under control,’ he said querulously. ‘I should not have to deal with such a termagant.’

      ‘Gave you back as good as she got, did she?’ said Monty with satisfaction. ‘Good for her!’

      ‘I should have known you would somehow ruin my plans for the next generation of Claremonts,’ muttered the earl peevishly. ‘Bringing a creature like that to Shevington. I am supposed to have complete peace and quiet!’

      ‘Well, don’t worry!’ snapped Monty, turning on his heel. ‘Once I find her, you may be sure neither of us will be returning to this benighted place!’

      Muttering under his breath, Monty took the stairs to their suite two at a time. He did not know what he expected to find when he got there. It was just that that was where he pictured her. And the last place anyone had seen her.

      When he strode into their sitting room, the first thing he saw was the vase, which she had taken such pains to save, lying smashed to pieces in the fireplace. So many pieces—it must have been hurled to the ground with some force!

      Midge had been furious. And who could blame her? His father was the outside of enough.

      And far more unstable than even he had suspected. The earl had been so pleased Midge was pregnant. Monty would have thought that would have been enough to protect her from falling foul of one of his father’s irrational outbursts.

      Apparently not, he thought bitterly, nudging at some of the larger pieces of pottery with the toe of his boot.

      Then something else caught his eye. A single sheet of writing paper. He picked it up, scanned it swiftly and screwed his eyes shut against the clipped, formal language informing her of her stepbrother’s death.

      My God! He sank to the sofa, his head in his hands. Just when she had needed him most, he had not been here. He had gone running off to London, in a stupid attempt to preserve his own pride.

      But what good was his damned dignity if he had lost her?

      He could picture how it must have been. The scene with his father, and then getting news like that. She must have been beside herself to have hurled the vase into the fireplace with such force. And then what? Knowing Midge, she had probably gone charging off without giving a thought to where she was going. Unless there was some particular spot on the estate she had grown fond of. Where she might go to find some kind of solace.

      But then, why had she not returned at nightfall?

      His stomach clenched as he pictured her stumbling down the main stairs, weeping…running out into the woods she loved so much…falling…lying injured and so badly hurt she was unable to rise. And he cursed himself for not spending more time with her. For working so hard to prove himself worthy of the position he would one day fill. For putting his father’s demands before her needs. Now the only people who might know where she might have gone were the twins, with whom she had spent the majority of her time.

      The twins! His father was sending them away, any day now, but they had not gone yet.

      Shooting to his feet, he charged along the corridor and up the stairs to the set of rooms in the attics they inhabited.

      They looked up from where they were kneeling on the floor packing their trunks, when he burst in upon them.

      ‘Do you know where she might have gone?’ he blurted.

      They both looked at the screwed-up piece of paper he was still clutching in his hand.

      ‘Doesn’t it say in her note?’ said Jem, at the exact same moment Tobe said, ‘Just like our mother.’

      ‘What?’ Monty looked from one to the other, in complete bewilderment.

      ‘We’re sorry, Vern,’ said Jem, getting up and wiping his nose on the sleeve of his jacket.

      ‘She betrayed us, too.’

      ‘Getting us banished from Shevington, coz there’s only room for one baby in the nursery!’

      ‘And then running off with her fancy man!’ said Tobe indignantly. ‘If she was gonna do that to you, there was no need to get us sent to school!’

      ‘She has not run off with a fancy man!’ Monty protested. ‘She must have met with an accident. She is out there somewhere.’ He waved his arm towards the window that overlooked their beloved woods. ‘Does she have a favourite place? Somewhere she would go if she was upset?’

      The twins looked at each other and he could see some message pass between them, before Jem looked him straight in the eye and declared, with touching sympathy, ‘Vern, we told you, she’s gone to the Silent Woman to meet her fancy man!’

      ‘Hanging around here for days, he was.’

      ‘And she pretended she didn’t want to see him.’

      ‘But as soon as you left, she went straight off after him like a shot!’

      A new fear gripped Monty as he recalled the dreamy expression on her face, the night he had assaulted her on Lady Carteret’s terrace. Her insistence it had been produced by thinking about some other man. How, a few days ago, she had thrust a letter into the flames and lied about its contents. And how her face had closed up when he had forbidden her to go to London with him.

      He strode towards the window, running the fingers of one hand through his hair, whilst crumpling the letter from her stepbrother in the other.

      He was constantly running up against the spectre of that Other Man!

      But surely, Midge would not just run out on him? She was too honest, too direct to behave in such a sneaky way. And now that she was expecting, too…hell, she knew how much this child meant to everyone at Shevington!

      No, he could not believe she would be so deliberately cruel. She did not have a cruel bone СКАЧАТЬ