The Virgin Who Ruined Lord Gray - Anna Bradley Page 0,1
what London needed.
Still, since fate had doomed him to a lifetime of aristocratic idleness, he was obligated to do the thing properly. So, after weeks spent haunting his townhouse, Tristan had reluctantly agreed to accompany his friend Lord Lyndon to White’s tonight. He’d had vague notions of engaging in activities earls were meant to find amusing—drinking, wagering, that sort of thing—but Tristan hadn’t been amused.
He’d found it all utterly pointless. He’d left early, and was nearly home before it occurred to him White’s was meant to be pointless.
Pointlessness was, in fact, rather the point.
Given that the evening had been a spectacular failure, Tristan didn’t hold out much hope for any of the other gentlemanly pursuits London had to offer. Indeed, after tonight, he couldn’t think of a single reason to remain in the city at all.
Aside, perhaps, from the boy on Lord Everly’s roof.
Tristan retrieved his port, sank down into his chair, and tipped his glass against his lips. A proper earl didn’t waste perfectly good port. The boy was bound to do something interesting sooner or later. Tristan was content to sip his port, and wait until he did.
And wait, and wait, and wait…
Time didn’t hesitate to take liberties with Tristan—the past few weeks had dragged on for years—but never had the minutes crawled by as reluctantly as they did now. The shadows lengthened, the fire burned to embers, the long-case clock on the first-floor landing chimed the hours, and somewhere, an entire civilization rose and fell again.
And still, Tristan waited.
Surely it was unnatural for any boy to remain motionless for so long? But even when it started raining, the lad never twitched. He simply lay there, still as a corpse—
Tristan jerked to his feet, his empty glass tumbling to the floor. He peered down at the still figure, but it was too dark for him to tell if the boy’s chest was moving.
Was it possible he was a corpse? How the devil would a corpse end up on Lord Everly’s roof? Then again, if a phantom thief could appear on a roof, mightn’t a phantom corpse do so, as well?
No, no. That wouldn’t do. There were limits to what Tristan would tolerate in his delusions. A phantom thief was one thing, but a corpse quite another. That was one hallucination too far. And so, Tristan was left with a single, unavoidable conclusion.
There was a dead boy, lying on the roof of Lord Everly’s pediment.
A dead boy on one’s neighbor’s roof wasn’t the sort of thing a gentleman could overlook, and that, Tristan would later reflect, was the cause of all the chaos that followed.
If the situation had been even a trifle less alarming than a dead boy on a roof, he might not have ventured out at all. He might have remained in his library, helped himself to another glass of port, and gotten sotted, like a proper earl was meant to do.
As it was, chaos found him, and once she had him, she showed him no mercy. She seized him by the neck, sank her talons into his flesh, and hurled him headlong into a tumult without even the courtesy of a second glance.
* * * *
If Sophia Monmouth had realized how easy it would be to scale the front of a London townhouse, she’d have left her footprints across every rooftop in Mayfair by now.
A single leap, and she was balanced on the top edge of the wrought iron railing flanking the stone steps. A bit of a scramble and a discreet shimmy or two, and she was clinging to one of the columns on either side of the front door, her arms and legs wrapped around it, albeit in a most unladylike fashion. From there it had been easy enough to haul herself up and clamber over the edge of the pediment.
Unnecessary risk, Sophia.
Lady Clifford’s voice often found its way into Sophia’s head at times like these. If ignoring it caused her the tiniest pang of guilt, Sophia had nonetheless become accustomed to shrugging it off.
It wasn’t that Lady Clifford was wrong, exactly. Strictly speaking, Sophia hadn’t had to scale the front of Lord Everly’s townhouse. She could have hidden around a corner or behind a tree like an ordinary intruder, but she’d been curious to see if she could manage the thing. After all, a lady never knew when she’d be obliged to make use of some lord or other’s rooftop. It was a simple matter of knowing one’s capabilities.