Read Online Amanda Scott - [Dangerous 02] by Dangerous Angels - Free Book Online Page A

today, but I took care that she won’t be whipped this time. I believe that if she works hard and always does her best, one day she will be very thankful for her training.”
    Letty did not look convinced, but when Charley suggested a gallop, she agreed with alacrity.
    Their mourning gowns arrived the following day, and the day after that, the Earl of St. Merryn breathed his last breath. Charley was with him when he died, and she felt abandoned, even a little angry, but she experienced almost none of the profound grief she had expected to feel. St. Merryn had played a large part in her life. Now he was gone, but she felt only the same empty numbness she had felt since the accident. It seemed strange, but she did not allow her thoughts to dwell on it for long. There were too many other details to attend to, no time to contemplate mere emotions.
    Stephen Kenhorn arrived from Bodmin that afternoon. He met with Charley in her grandfather’s library, a spacious room lined with books that she doubted the hunting-mad earl had ever read. Kenhorn, a thin, wiry man with a habit of wringing his hands together, seemed almost put out with St. Merryn for dying before his arrival.
    “I’d have come last night, Miss Charlotte, but for the unfortunate circumstance of my having had business yesterday in Truro. Everything there is in a great bustle, you know, thanks to all the preparations in train to consecrate the new cathedral.”
    “What must we do next, Mr. Kenhorn?” Charley asked, having no patience for amenities. She had already sustained a trying hour with Lady St. Merryn, who clearly believed her husband had died to make her life more difficult than it was already.
    The solicitor primmed up his lips. “Fortunately, you had the good sense to describe his lordship’s condition when you wrote of your parents’ deaths, so I came prepared for the worst. I’m just sorry I could not get here sooner. Your father, I regret to say, made no will. He had no private fortune, in any case, only the allowance Lord St. Merryn gave him each quarter. Still, I had hoped I might get here soon enough to remind his lordship of that fact.” He clicked his tongue in frustration.
    “What about my mother’s money?”
    “Well, Mrs. Tarrant had her marriage portion, of course, but if there is a penny left of that, my dear, I shall own myself astonished. Your parents were not careful with their money, never were.”
    Recalling many arguments between the two over that painful subject, Charley sighed. “I suppose you mean I am entirely dependent upon what Grandpapa left me.”
    Mr. Kenhorn looked uncomfortable. “Ah, as to that, my dear, I should be talking out of school if I were to reveal details of his will before the proper reading. That must take place, of course, directly after the funeral. And that will be … ?” He raised his brows quizzically.
    “They’ll all be buried tomorrow,” Charley said. “There is no point in waiting longer. The family is too spread about to expect anyone to come, and I refuse to pack all the bodies in ice merely so that more relatives can see them put underground.”
    “Just so,” he said, glancing at her with undisguised concern. “Just so.”
    “I suppose you think me callous, sir. I am not. I am merely practical. My grandmother is most distressed by all this, as you might imagine. It will not help her to know that her son, her husband, and her daughter-in-law are all stored away down in the ice house, awaiting the gathering of a proper funeral party.”
    “Perhaps you would prefer to sit down whilst we finish our little talk,” the solicitor said with a worried frown.
    “If you like, certainly.” She gestured toward a chair near the hearth, where a cheerful fire crackled, and took its twin for herself.
    “Have you no one to support you, my dear?” he asked gently. “No older female—or even better, a male relative?”
    “I’ll manage on my own, Mr. Kenhorn, thank you. And that’s just as well,