Free Twilight with the Infamous Earl by Alexandra Hawkins Page B

was saying at the end.”
    Emily could not avoid the truth. She had come to London to find a man named Frost, but he had found her first. He had even rescued her and a young girl.
    I feel obligated to warn you that my brother is quite the scoundrel.
    Regan’s words had haunted her all evening. She had erroneously assumed her sister’s seducer had been a Lord Frost or a Mr. Frost. She had not considered that the name Lucy had whispered in her ear with her last breath might be an affectionate nickname.
    There was no one watching her. She no longer had to hide her feelings. With a muffled sob, Emily did not bother hold back her tears. Her hands slid down the bedpost as she fell to her knees. She cried for her sister, who had loved the wrong man and had taken her life because she could not live with her sins. She also cried for herself. Lucy had asked Emily to keep her secrets, and she had kept her promise.
    However, the knowledge that the man who had seduced and abandoned her sister had walked away unscathed had weighed on her heart. Her guilt and frustration had burned like a caustic poison in her throat. It was only when her mother had told her that she would be spending the season in London that a kernel of a plan began to germinate.
    What if she could find Frost?
    What would it take to destroy him?
    It was a fanciful notion. She was a mere woman. If he was a nobleman, what power could she wield against him? Or worse, what if he was a dangerous man?
    The Frost she had met on the streets of London fit both descriptions. What troubled her most was that she was attracted to the earl. He was handsome and witty, and he was the first man Emily had kissed.
    Sitting on the floor of her bedchamber, Emily sobbed as if her heart were broken. She barely knew the man, but if he was the gentleman who ruined her sister, then he was her enemy.
    She did not want to make the same mistake as her sister, and fall in love with Lord Chillingsworth.

 
    Chapter Nine
     
    Frost was in a foul mood when he entered his town house.
    Emily Cavell had literally slipped from his fingers before he was finished with her; Dare had teased him mercilessly all evening; the damn puppies he had chased away from Emily had taken turns sneering at him—though they were intelligent enough to keep their distance; he had lost at cards; Lady Netherley tried to corner him because there was a young lady that the elderly marchioness thought he should meet; and an old rival had worked up the courage to confront him about a former lover. Frost assured the gentleman that he was happy to oblige him, but not in the middle of Lord and Lady Fiddick’s ballroom. As he had departed to confront the man in a less public setting that they had arranged in advance, his sister told him to stay away from Emily.
    “No lady holds your heart for long,” she had pointed out as they stood in the Fiddicks’ front hall. “And I will not have you breaking my friend’s.”
    “I cannot break something I have never claimed or desired” had been his reply. “My interests lay farther south.”
    It had been the wrong thing to say to Regan. With her nose in the air, she had stomped off. Dare would eventually calm her down with assurances that her friend was safe from Frost’s machinations.
    Some lies benefited everyone.
    “Good evening, Lord Chillingsworth,” his butler greeted him in the front hall. Several lamps were lit, but his state of undress revealed the servant had been roused from his bed.
    “Sparrow, there is no need for you to wait on me at this late hour,” Frost chided as he removed his gloves. If his servants kept his unpredictable evening hours, nothing would ever get done during the day.
    He walked over to the small mirror on the wall and peered at the small cut at the corner of this mouth. The bleeding had stopped almost immediately, but the wound was tender.
    “Milord, you are hurt.”
    “It is nothing. Lasher has the pugilist skills of an elderly woman. If his