Page 14 of The Viscount's Seduction
Damn this world. Damn thetonand propriety and earldoms and... Shaldon. What the devil was father up to? And did he himself give a damn about it?
This beast’s granddam won first at Thurles. She’s good Irish Connemara and the best hotblood lines, as fast as any of your English hacks, I’d b-bet you.
The gelding snorted, drawing his attention. He was one of a number of dappled grays in their stock, and he had a bit of his dam’s cantankerous spirit. They’d not been able to breed out the worst parts of Pooka and her hobgoblin curse.
He’d brought her and the other Glenmorrow horses home to Cransdall all those years ago, and then, upon Mother’s horrifying death, promptly forgot the girl in the stall.
Surely this was the Earl of Glenmorrow’s wild daughter, the one who whispered to horses. The one whose brother, heir to an earldom, had betrayed England.
He’d paid a high bounty for Glenmorrow’s fine horses, but Mother wouldn’t tell him why. What had his father done to Glenmorrow? Lady Sirena’s plight was all tied up in it, as well as her unsuitability.
Someone would know, someone who would not run to his father with tales of his snooping.
His father’s man, Kincaid, who now lodged with his brother Bink knew all the stories, but he was also the surest one to tattle. He could ask Bink, but Bink’s investigating might stir up the kind of troubles his father had warned about.
There was Lady Hackwell. She seemed to have a finger on the pulse of every distressed damsel in London, and she had seen fit to bring both ladies to her ball. But paying a call on her was sure to pique Hackwell’s curiosity.
And Father would get wind and cause one sort of trouble or another.
He turned his horse toward Berkeley Square. Bink, it would be. His brother was close to both of the Hackwells. He’d been the Hackwells’ steward two years earlier. He could get to her ladyship unobtrusively, and Bink had his own past grievances with Father. He was the lowest risk.
