Free Tananguard 02 - To Love a Lord by Diedre Clark Page A

you to take care of his business arrangements while he’s away, hasn’t he?”
    Connor frowned down at her, trying his best to show his disapproval of her actions. “You need not concern yourself with those. I’m certain if there is anything you should know, your husband will inform you of it. Thus, there is no need for me to join you for tea. Good day, Lady Cunningham.” With those words, he left before she could pull him in further.
    Connor didn’t go home until late that evening. His mind was a whirl. His thoughts running from Lord Cunningham, the arrangements they had made, Lady Cunningham and her obvious offer, and Sophia Murrieta. There was too much to think on, so he had gone to a pub to gamble and drink it away. When he did finally return home, he found Lucas waiting up for him. The year they had come to London, Lucas’s father, Lord Archibald Hoffman, had offered them both rooms in his London home, and they had lived there since.
    “Where have you been?” Lucas asked curiously. “I haven’t seen you since yesterday afternoon.”
    Connor gave the simplest answer. “I went to a pub.”
    “A pub or a woman’s home?” Lucas said .
    Connor shook his head and decided to play along. “If you knew, why did you ask?”
    Lucas shrugged his shoulders. “How was it?”
    Connor laughed, not answering.
    They stood in silence then Lucas said suddenly, “The servant girl.”
    “The servant girl?” Connor asked in confusion.
    “The one you insulted at Lady Markham’s yesterday. She’s the one,” Lucas continued.
    “ I don’t recall insulting a servant girl,” Connor said.
    “Ye s, the one who played the pianoforte. I was not there long, but I do recall the reference to her being a maid,” Lucas explained.
    Connor shook his head. Lucas would remember that small detail amongst everything else which occurred. “What about her?”
    “It’s time to play The Game, Connor.” He gave Connor a meaningful look.
    The Game—it had started almost six years earlier at Lord and Lady Davenhue’s yearly Christmas party back in the Peaks District where Lucas and Connor were from. They had made a bet that night. Each young man had picked a lucky girl for the other, and the goal was to get a kiss from that girl by the end of the night. The man who got his kiss first won the bet. The bet turned into a game for them, and as a simple kiss grew boring, the stakes rose. When the two men moved to London a year and a half after their first bet, they began betting on who could lure his girl to his bed first.
    Now, almost six years after it all began, Connor was being challenged yet again , and the woman was Josephine Meredith…Sophia Murrieta.
    “No,” Connor replied abruptly.
    “No? You’d prefer Rebecca Cunningham then? I heard you insulted her nicely as well.”
    Connor opened his mouth then shut it again.
    “It’s your choice, my friend. The servant girl or Cunningham’s wife.” Lucas smiled, and Connor frowned. Lucas had just hooked Connor.
    “Ver y well. The servant girl it is, but on one condition.”
    Lucas grinned. “Name it.”
    “You get Cunningham’s wife,” Connor said.
    Lucas’s grin turned devilish. “Then The Game begins.”

Chapter 4
    Josephine woke with a start. Her mother’s name had been yelled, a name she, herself, had been known by for almost three years in London. She had used it in memory of her mother and out of spite for her uncle, denouncing her last name of Meredith to take up her mother’s maiden name of Murrieta. Sophia Murrieta. That is what she insisted Connor call her, and it was a name that now pained her. She was a different woman back then—fun, full of life. She had a life to live and love to give. Now she was simply Josephine, and she would always just be plain old Josephine, tired and broken.
    As though playing on her memory, the name Sophia echoed once more through the night. She hadn’t dreamt it. Somebody really was shouting her mother’s name. A third time the