Free Julia London 4 Book Bundle by The Rogues of Regent Street Page B

slandering my name,” he added, a little more roughly than he intended.
    “Of
course
not!” she gasped. “How very wonderful that we may travel, and meet new people, and explore the world!” she exclaimed happily.
    Explore the world with this bumpkin? Lord God, he could hardly imagine her beyond her own sitting room, much less in some of the finest salons of Europe. What nonsense … but what difference? He might take her to Europe once, let her
experience
life. Surely that would take care of her naive desire to meet savages in the far corners of the earth. The lass beamed at him as if he had just handed her a fistful of diamonds. “Lord Albright! I should very happily accept your offer!” she exclaimed. “I can hardly wait to tell Caroline! To think that I might actually see the Levant! I’ve read all about it, you see,” she eagerly explained, and launched into a monologue of some book she had read.
    Adrian smiled as she spoke, but his victory over Archie did not taste nearly as sweet as he had anticipated.
    The wedding took place exactly five days later. As Adrian was not welcome at Kealing Park, the traditional wedding breakfast was held in the village assembly rooms following the ceremony. It was the one thing Adrian had insisted upon, despite the Dashell pleas to host the affair at Blackfield Grange. On that point he was unyielding—the ceremony had to be in Kealing. He wanted everyone to see his victory.
    And everyone seemed to be in attendance. If he had had to guess, Adrian suspected no fewer than five houses had been put to the task of preparing the wedding breakfast. He had no inkling of the details; his sole task had been to provide an endless stream of funds.
    And inform Lord Kealing and his son of the happy occasion.
    He would have liked to do that in person, but his requests for an audience were returned unopened. So he had resorted to informing them in writing. His note had been short and sweet:
To the Right Honorable Marquis
of Kealing, Archibald Spence, and Lord Benedict, it is with great happiness that I inform you I am to be wed on Saturday next to Miss Lilliana Dashell of Blackfield Grange. Please do me the great honor of joining us on this, the happiest of occasions.
    Lilliana had also sent a note to Benedict with his, one she labored over for a good hour. It had been the one unhappy moment Adrian had seen in her all week.
    Beyond that, the Princess of Blackfield Grange had been completely ecstatic. He dutifully called every afternoon, more to occupy his time than to prove his sincerity, because he was making himself mad idly waiting for a response to his letter to Lord Rothembow. Every afternoon he was greeted with a flurry of anxious activity. Lord and Lady Dashell were frazzled by the daunting prospect of launching a wedding suitable for a baron’s daughter in less than a week, and had, in Adrian’s opinion, unwisely added to the melee by deciding to take the waters at Bath after the wedding. Apparently Baron Dashell, feeling a new sense of freedom with Adrian’s generous settlement, had determined that spending the winter months in Bath would be just the thing for Lady Dashell’s humor and to convince Caroline to set her sights on someone other than Horace Featherbrain. Young Tom remained quite sullen, rarely leaving his rooms when Adrian came. Caroline bounced about like an india rubber bail, chattering endlessly about gowns and trousseaus and little family secrets.
    Adrian did feel honor-bound to explain his circumstance to his fiancée. He told her he was estranged from his father, but did not offer the details of why. The very thought of Phillip still made him ill—mentioning his name aloud was impossible. To her credit, Lilliana had listened attentively, then flashed a smile with that tantalizing little dimple and insisted that while she was sorry about his estrangement from his father, it did not concern her in the least. She did not ask any questions, and for that he was