"Hiatt, Brenda - Daring Deception" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hiatt Brenda)

tone, the crowd of gentlemen melted away at once.

"I--I seem to have a problem," stammered the young baronet as soon as they
were alone. He raked agitated fingers through his thick shock of fair hair
as he stared despondently down at the table, unable to meet the other man's
eyes. "You don't have the means to pay your gaming debts. Yes, I had
gathered that." Sea brooke's voice was cold now. He had needed those
winnings so desperately!

"You realize that I could have you barred from White's for playing under
false pretences."

Sir Thomas's head came up at once.

"It was no such thing!" he declared hotly.

"The Chesterton fortune is every bit as extensive as I said. I just don't
exactly... have access to it at the moment. It is tied up in trust, you
see." A flame of renewed hope sprang up in Gavin's breast.

"But the money is yours?"

"Yes, yes, of course! Well, mine and my sister's, anyway. The terms of m'
father's will were rather ... irregular." Lord Sea brooke thought he detected
a certain bitterness in the lad's voice.

"My share will more than cover your twelve thousand pounds, but my allowance
won't make a dent in it. In fact, my pockets are practically to let till
next quarter." The despair was back in his eyes, and Sea brooke felt his
brief hope wither.

His circumstances were becoming increasingly desperate.

Despite his lack of a title, Major Gavin Alexander had cut quite a dash in
fashionable London, especially with the ladies. The slight limp his war
injury had left him seemed to make him an even more romantic figure in their
eyes. His leisure hours had been spent in amusements reputable and
disreputable, and his near-notoriety gained him entry into places few
noblemen frequented.

This latter had made him particularly useful to the wartime government,
though he could no longer serve in combat.

Never precisely wealthy, he had managed to live well enough on what the War
Office paid him--until recently.

When the news reached him that his Uncle Edmund, a virtual stranger due to a
longstanding feud between the 5th earl and Gavin's late father, had succumbed
to a fever, the new Lord Sea brooke had been both stunned and elated. Giving
notice at Whitehall, he had at once travelled north to his new holdings,