The Handmaiden's Necklace Read Online Free

forward to. She was eager for the chance to make a new life in America, where no one had ever heard of The Scandal.
    In the meantime, she had to find the courage to get through her aunt’s miserable tea.
     
    Rafael slipped a forest-green tailcoat on over his beige piqué waistcoat. His valet, a short, slight, balding man who had been in his service for years, reached up to straighten the knot on his stock.
    “There you are, Your Grace.”
    “Thank you, Petersen.”
    “Will there be anything more, sir?”
    “Not until my return, which should be sometime latethis afternoon.” He didn’t intend to stay at the affair very long, just drop by and pay his respects, and of course leave a sizable bank draft for the orphans. After all, it was his civic duty.
    He told himself it had nothing to do with the notion Danielle Duval might also be in attendance, convinced himself that if she were, he would ignore her as he had done before.
    He wouldn’t say any of the things he had longed to say five years ago, wouldn’t let her know how badly her betrayal had hurt him. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing how devastated he had been, that for weeks after it had happened he had barely been able to function. Instead, he would make clear his disdain for her without a single word.
    His coach-and-four waited in front of the house, a lavish three-story structure in Hanover Square that his father had built for his mother, who now lived in a separate, smaller, but no-less-elegant apartment on the east side of the mansion.
    A footman pulled open the carriage door. Rafe mounted the steps and settled himself against the red velvet squabs, and the coach rumbled off down the cobbled street. The afternoon tea was being held in the gardens of the Mayfair residence of the Marquess of Denby, whose wife was deeply involved in the charity for London’s widows and orphans.
    The mansion, in Breton Street, wasn’t that far away. The carriage rolled up in front and a footman opened the door. Rafe departed the coach and made his way up the front porch steps past two liveried footmen, who ushered him through the entry out to the garden at the rear of the house.
    Most of the guests had already arrived, just as he hadhoped, and they clustered here and there on the terrace, or walked the gravel paths through the leafy foliage of the garden. A group of children, plainly dressed but clean, their hair neatly combed, played at the base of a stone fountain on the right side of the garden.
    The charity organized by Lady Denby was a good one. There weren’t enough orphanages in the city to care for the needy and many homeless children who wound up in infant poorhouses, workhouses, apprenticed as chimney sweeps, or grew up as vagrants and beggars, living hand-to-mouth on the streets.
    Most orphans were taken care of by local parishes, often abominable excuses for homes. Foundlings brought into their care rarely lived to reach their first year. Rafe had heard of a parish in Westminster that had received five hundred bastards in a single year—and raised only one of them past five years of age.
    But the London Society funded several large orphan homes of a very high caliber.
    “Your Grace!” Lady Denby hurried toward him, a big-bosomed woman with glossy black hair cut short and curling around her face. “How good of you to come.”
    “I’m afraid I can’t stay long. I just stopped by to present you with a bank draft for the orphanage.” He dragged the folded piece of paper from his pocket and handed it over, all the while scanning the guests to see who might also be there.
    “Why, this is quite wonderful, Your Grace—especially since you made such a generous donation at the ball.”
    He shrugged his shoulders. He could certainly afford it and he had always liked children. Having a family of hisown was the main reason he had recently decided to take a wife. That and the fact his mother and aunt hounded him incessantly about living up to his