Free Passionate by Anthea Lawson Page B

Strathmores’ entourage.
    It was good, too, to be away from Brookdale. To be away from Lily, if he were truthful. James felt more than distracted by her. All day his thoughts had returned again and again to the conservatory and to the painter with the blue apron and soft, kissable lips.
    “Well, well, if it isn’t my cousin, the celebrated duelist.” The taunting voice intruded into James’s thoughts.
    “Reggie.” His pleasure dimmed as he watched his raven-haired cousin slide into the adjacent chair.
    “I see you are riding out your notoriety in the bottom of a glass. Capital idea. I’ll join you.” Reggie signaled the waiter.
    “I wasn’t aware you were a member of this club. Their standards must be slipping.”
    His cousin arched a brow. “Since they let you in, I’d have to agree. Look at you, James. You are under a cloud of scandal, you have no prospects, a pitiable income—and your boots are a disgrace.”
    James glanced down at his boots and frowned. “Why are you here? And more to the point, when will you be leaving?”
    “You wound me. I have searched high and low to compliment you on your marksmanship, and all you are interested in is when you might be rid of me. I say, your years in savage India have done nothing to improve your manners.” Reggie leaned closer, his eyes dark as coal smoke. “I hear you’re being exiled. A shame, but family honor and all that.”
    “I’m touched by your concern.”
    “Don’t mention it, coz.” He accepted a glass from the returning waiter and drained it. “I would have thought you’d be long gone by now, hiding under some rock. Tsk, tsk. Father will be disappointed. You were always such an obedient child. Did they issue you a new backbone in the army or are you still planning to leave town like a good little boy?”
    “My plans are not your concern.”
    James had hoped that after his long absence in India his relations with his cousin could be more civil. They had been at odds since the day he and his sister had arrived as children, orphaned. Every act of kindness displayed by their uncle toward them was taken as a slight by Reggie, and often accompanied by some petty payback—a broken toy, a missing letter crumpled and tossed in the wastebasket before it could be read. It was as if Reggie believed that there was not enough love in the world, or that his father’s heart could not expand to include three children in the household.
    Whatever his motivation, Reggie appeared intent on picking up where the two of them had left off. If anything, he seemed more hostile than ever. Caroline had shared some of the darker gossip circulating about their cousin. His erratic behavior, disappearing for weeks at a time, the frequent shouting arguments with Lord Denby—and the troubling rumors that he was deeply in debt and financing his excesses by taking loans against his inheritance.
    Reggie fixed James with a dark-eyed stare. “As I am the Huntington heir, your plans are very much my concern. Particularly when my sources tell me that since gunning down poor Hereford in Hyde Park you have been tearing about buying tents and pack-saddles and such. Hardly necessary if you were planning to retreat for a few weeks to the country.” He sat back and steepled his long fingers. “I must admit, I became curious. What is my cousin up to? Why is he down at the shipping-line offices inquiring about passage to the Mediterranean?”
    James felt the familiar cold fire burn through him. “You have no right to spy on me. You’re meddling in affairs that are none of your business.”
    “James, James. If you’re planning what I suspect, it is very much my business.”
    “What business might that be?”
    “The absurd quest for Grandfather’s journals.”
    So that was Reggie’s game. James took a sip of brandy.
    “You know about the will, then.”
    Reggie’s mouth twisted unpleasantly. “I have a keen interest in how my property is disposed of. Grandfather’s scheme to