Lady Alex's Gamble

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Authors: Evelyn Richardson
Tags: Fiction, General, Romance
accomplish his task. Lord Wrotham was forced to go where men of rank and influence were, and he thus had more than ample opportunity to witness his parent 75
    Lady Alex's Gamble
    by Evelyn Richardson
    disporting herself with the worshipful Lord Grainger. If it had been someone even a decade older than the besotted lord, Christopher would have been delighted to relinquish the role of escort, but even he, inured as he was to his mother's propensity for enslaving hapless males, was taken aback at the state of affairs, hence his presence in Grosvenor Square.
    "Very well, Mama," he said with a sigh. "I shall take you to Lady Derwent's rout, but I am pledged to meet with Farrington at White's later in the evening, so you will not be able to dance until dawn as you usually do."
    "Oh, Christopher"—his mother pulled a face at him—"I am not such a flighty creature as all that. Why, Nevill—that is Lord Grainger—always brings me home at a most respectable hour."
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    76
    Lady Alex's Gamble
    by Evelyn Richardson

Chapter 8
    All in all, the rout had not been all that bad. Lord Wrotham had been able to snatch moments of private conversation with two of Parliament's more influential members and had even borne up during a quadrille with his mother's protégé, who had turned out to be as vain as she was beautiful. But, buoyed by thoughts of his imminent departure to the Continent the minute his mission was accomplished, Christopher had been able to respond to her inanities with more than his usual patience.
    However, it was with considerable relief that after seeing his mother safely home, he strolled leisurely to White's. Not that the sight of men wasting their minds and their inheritances on the turn of a card was any more enlightening than partnering women who could do nothing but call attention to themselves, but it did at least offer some sort of a mental challenge if one were alert enough to take it.
    "Wrotham." A giant of a man waved cheerfully to him the moment the major crossed the threshold.
    "Hello, Teddy, old fellow. How are you?" Christopher sustained a buffet on the shoulder that would have felled the average man.
    "Devilish bored, I'll tell you," the giant responded with a woebegone air. "I tell you, this head-of-the-family bit is a plaguey business, it is. Nothing but people nattering at you all day long about one thing or another. If I could, I would give it all up for that miserably wet tent we shared in the mud at 77
    Lady Alex's Gamble
    by Evelyn Richardson
    Ciudad Rodrigo." The new Marquess of Lindale dismissed the renowned Palladian villa and an exceedingly fine old Tudor pile he had recently inherited, not to mention a hunting box near Melton Mowbray, with a disparaging wave of the hand.
    "But come, tell me what you are up to and what news you have of the lads in the regiment. What of Charlie Welbeck?
    Was he forced to return to that dragon of a mother of his or did he marry that cosy little armful he was smitten with in Oporto?" And laughing and reminiscing about old times, he led his former comrade-at-arms into the gaming room. It was as though Christopher had never left. To be sure, the bow window in front was new since he had last been there and the proprietor was different, but the faces gathered around the gaming tables had not changed, nor had the bored and slightly vacant look in their eyes. Wrotham sighed. He never should have come here. It was no different from the rest of London in its empty pursuit of pleasure. Better to have returned to his chambers at Stephens's and pored over the latest dispatches. He glanced lazily about the room. No wonder Teddy was bored among this company of useless fribbles throwing away the fortunes they had been born with. His gaze stopped at one table, arrested by the sight of regimentals on a tall blond lad observing the play. At least here was a fellow officer, and by the look of his bronzed and weathered skin and the lines crinkling at the

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