The Mysterious Lord Ballantine (IMPROPER LADIES #1) by Maggi Andersen EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
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- Authors: Maggi Andersen
- Language: English
- Genre: Historical Romance
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- Size: 6.5 MB
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Daintith Park
Three weeks later
The guests, drinking wine, milled around the Marquess and Marchioness
of Daintith’s drawing room, speaking in subdued voices. When the news
had come that her best friend, Lady Anne, had been kidnapped while
returning from a shopping trip in Bath, Diana had wept until her pillow had
been soaked. No trace of her had been found, even after her father had paid
a ransom. Now, Diana had no more tears to shed, and a lump blocked her
dry throat.
Anne’s ill mother absent, Lord Daintith walked among the guests
looking strained. Anne had admitted privately to Diana to struggling to like
her father, whom she found overbearing, but perhaps he loved his daughter.
“The gentleman in black in the corner is Viscount Withnell,”
Grandmama whispered. “Apparently, his and Anne’s betrothal was about to
be announced when she was taken.”
Diana saw no sign that the viscount was heartbroken. He looked
impatient, tapping his hand against his thigh, as if he wished to leave. He
was a tall man with a hard mouth. But grief affected people differently, she
reminded herself.
The last letter Anne had written to her mentioned a gentleman her father
had been considering for her husband. This, apparently, was he.
With a nod to her sorrowful grandmother, who stood with her father,
Diana slipped out through the open French doors onto the terrace. Everyone
talked as if Anne were gone forever. They could not give up on her. They
must not. Surely, it was possible to uncover something that might lead them
to the place where Anne was held? Diana could not believe she was dead.
She wasn’t prepared to believe it.
Anne’s maid had been sent home carrying a note from the kidnappers
with instructions for where to leave the ransom. She had become hysterical
and had been sent off to stay with her mother.
Though the weeks since Anne’s disappearance had blurred together,
Diana remembered, a few days after she’d gotten the news, riding her horse
to the Daintith estate. Instead of heading to the front door, as she always
had, she’d gone to the stables. She’d found Joseph Cullin, the groom who’d
been in attendance to Anne’s carriage that day, grooming a horse on the
cobbles.
He swung around as she entered the courtyard, his jaw agape. “Lady
Diana!”
Diana dismounted from Artemis. “A sad day, Joseph. Can you tell me
how it happened?”
“I told them everything I know, my lady,” he said, his voice trembling.
“Yes, but, Joseph, I need to know.”
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