Free Lady Bess by Claudy Conn Page A

earl chuckled as Lady Bess and Donna playfully slapped him and Bess remarked, “You are always hungry.”
    Ignoring Robby’s mock outrage, Bess turned to the earl. “I still cannot fathom how they got these huge stones here.” She eyed him warningly. “And don’t say, magic .”
    “Ah, ye don’t believe in magic?” he countered. For a moment, he did as he stared into her green eyes. It was as though no one else were present. It was as though the world had faded into darkness and only they stood, staring into one another’s eyes.
    She seemed to him as though she were trying to catch her breath when she answered, “I, in fact, do believe in magic.”
    He had to stop this. He broke the spell of the moment with a chuckle and said, “Well, as to the huge sarsen stones, it is said that when these were brought so many centuries upon centuries ago, a waterway ran through this valley.”
    “How do you know all that?” she asked, surprised.
    “My mother brought me here once when I was a boy,” he said softly. “But that memory has faded, and now only this one will remain uppermost in my mind.”
    She laughed outright. “Your flattery is outrageous.”
    “Not flattery, m’bonnie lass.” He eyed her meaningfully, and even as he did so he chastised himself. He was doing exactly what he had told himself he would not do—he was getting in too deep.
    A moment later, he called out to Robby that it was indeed time to get some lunch. Some amiable jesting ensued before the earl meandered to the guide and slipped him a coin and a sincere thanks for his efforts.
    He led his party away from the growing number of tourists and smiled to himself. He found that all the balls and routs he had attended in London were nothing compared to the last couple of days he had spent. Why was that?
    At twenty-nine he was older than even Robby by a number of years. He was nine years older than Lady Bess—was that too old for her? Why had such a thought entered his head? What did it matter? He was only extending friendship, nothing more.
    * * *
    Sally Sonhurst stood at the window of her elegantly furnished morning room and looked at her courtyard gardens without really seeing them.
    Life had used her poorly early on, but she had learned how to survive. She had learned what was important. She was important. She had to look out for herself at all times—and at all cost.
    Her father had married her off to an aged, wicked, and licentious man in order to pay off his gaming debts. She had endured the old man’s odious groping for an entire year before she realized what she was capable of accomplishing.
    Providence had sent her the most unlikely of gentlemen to be her lover. At two and twenty he had been only a year older than she. He had an appetite for running with Prinny’s set and thus needed a ready flow of funds, funds he did not have. She did not have ready access to her aged husband’s money, but he did provide her with an allowance. She gave her lover that allowance with the promise of more to come when the deed was done.
    The arrangement they struck up would benefit them both.
    He had told her that the drug they needed was most innocuous and therefore would never bring down suspicion. She already had it on hand, but he purchased some in his own name and gave it to her so that hers would not appear overly used. It was one that every household had on hand: laudanum.
    She had already been giving her husband the drug. At first her intentions had been only to make him sleep so he would not visit her room at night. And then, one particular day when she was in her sitting room reading and he came in and began to grope her, she knew she couldn’t bear him any longer. That very night, she gave him a lethal dose and stood there watching as he writhed and choked and died. Surprise at her lack of remorse, surprise at her lack of sympathy for his suffering made her realize what she was capable of doing. She often wondered after that if she could, in