Free The Angels' Share (The Bourbon Kings Book 2) by J. R. Ward Page A

up to the garages and the rear of the mansion, and a formal, gated path of glory for family and proper guests. He took the latter, the one Lodges had been using for a century, and as he ascended, he glanced at himself in the rearview.
    It was good that he had sunglasses on. Sometimes one didn’t need to see one’s own eyes.
    Gin would be having breakfast, he thought as he pulled up in front of the house. With her new fiancé.
    Getting out, he did a pass-through with a hand to make sure his hair was back where it needed to be and picked up his great-uncle’s briefcase.His blue and white seersucker suit reordered itself on his body without any prompting, and there was no reason to worry about his bow tie. He’d done it properly before leaving his bedroom suite.
    “Good morning!”
    Pivoting on his handmade loafer, he raised a hand to the blond woman coming around the side of the house. Lizzie King was pushing a wheelbarrow full of ivy plants and had a glow about her that was the best recommendation for clean living he’d ever seen.
    No wonder Lane was in love with her.
    “Good morning to you,” Samuel T. said with a slight bow. “I’m here to see your man.”
    “He should be here shortly.”
    “Ah … do you need help? As a gentleman and a farmer, I feel as though I should offer.”
    Lizzie laughed him off and jogged the handles. “Greta and I’ve got this. Thanks.”
    “And I’ve got your man,” Samuel T. replied as he lifted his briefcase.
    “Thank you,” she said softly.
    “Don’t worry. I’m going to make Chantal go away—and I’m going to enjoy doing it.”
    With another wave, he strode over to the mansion’s entrance. Easterly’s pale stone steps were shallow and broad, and they brought him up to the Corinthian columns around the glossy black door with its lion’s head knocker.
    Samuel T. didn’t bother with formalities. He opened the way into a foyer so big one could have bowled in it.
    “Sir,” came a British clip. “Are you expected?”
    Newark Harris was the most recent in a long line of butlers, this current incarnation trained at Bagshot Park across the pond, or so Samuel T. had heard. The Englishman was very much out of the David Suchet as Hercule Poirot mold, officious, pressed as a fine pair of slacks, and vaguely disapproving of the Americans he served. In his black suit, white shirt, and black tie, he looked like he could have been in place since the house was built.
    Alas, that was only appearances. And the man had things to learn.
    “Always.”Samuel T. smiled. “I am always expected here. So if you’ll excuse me, that is all.”
    The Englishman’s dark brows shot up, but Samuel T. was already pivoting away. The dining room was to the right, and emanating from it, he could smell a familiar perfume.
    He told himself to stay away. But as usual, he could not.
    When it came to young, young Virginia Elizabeth Baldwine, soon-to-be-Pford, he never had been able to distance himself for very long.
    It was his only character flaw.
    Or rather, the only character flaw that concerned him.
    Striding across the black-and-white marble, he walked into the long, thin room with the same attitude as he had dismissed the butler. “Well, isn’t this romantic. The affianced enjoying a morning repast together.”
    Richard Pford’s head snapped up from his eggs and toast. Gin, meanwhile, showed no reaction—overtly, that was. But Samuel T. smiled at the way her knuckles went white on her coffee cup—and to make things sting more for her, he almost took the pleasure of informing her that her father’s suicide was common knowledge.
    She was better at being cruel than he was, however.
    And as Richard prattled on about something, all that registered was Gin’s long dark hair falling on her flowered silk blouse, and the Hermès scarf around her neck, and the perfect arrangement of her elegant body on the Chippendale chair. The overall effect was as if she had been posed by a great artist. Then