A June Bride Read Online Free PDF Page A

her—”
    “No excuses, all the same. I’m off to Lord Warring’s now. You are to call on Jacqueline Bremcott, without delay,” Lord Warring ordered over his shoulder as he went purposefully from the room.
    Geoffrey groaned, and leaned his head back against the high-backed chair. He closed his eyes, only to snap them open when a hand touched his shoulder.
    “I couldn’t wait upstairs. I eavesdropped and heard it all. No reprieve for the once fancy free Viscount Huntingsley, poor sot!” Elias grinned down at him, then moved around to take a chair next to his brother.
    “You are incorrigible,” Geoffrey scowled at him.
    “I can afford to be. Younger son, and all that.”
    “You’d be impossible if you were the eldest son.”
    “True, true, and so we see how nature balances things for us. Take this engagement to Lessie Hamilton. Now there’s a girl with some life in her, perfect for you, not like Jackie Bremcott. Jackie’s the kind of girl I should marry, because she’d see right through any foolishness of mine, having already demonstrated much like it herself. Not that I ever would marry her, mind you.” He grinned at Geoffrey.
    “Alessandra is pretty much of the same mold, is she not?” Geoffrey said languidly to disguise the fact he was faintly intrigued by his brother’s observations.
    “Oh, Alessandra’s a proper one, and all that, but how to say it? She sees things clearly. And when she talks, she actually means what comes out of her mouth. She’d never tell you she likes your waistcoat when in truth she thinks it a fright. She’d find some good in it, or manage to let you know in the kindest manner possible, so you’d not feel like you’d made a cake of yourself.”
    “And how do you know so much of ‘Lessie,’ as you are wont to call her?” Geoffrey asked, his voice drawling slightly.
    Elias eyed his big brother for a minute speculatively, then answered easily, “She’s closest of all the cousins to my age. We always romped around together at those family gatherings, while our elder siblings looked down their noses at us. So when I see her out and about, I give her a bit of my time.”
    “I’ve never noticed her ‘out and about.’”
    “Still looking down that nose then,” Elias assured him. “It’s big enough to blind you, apparently.”
    Geoffrey “hmphed,” resisting the urge to feel his nose—which wasn’t big at all, he was sure—then sighed and rolled his eyes toward the carved and gilded rococo ceiling over his head as he announced, “After Jacqueline, I’ve got to tell Mother next.”
    “Horrors!” Elias cried with a mock shudder.
    “My sentiments exactly. I cannot care to have another peal rung over my head.”
    Elias, unable to sustain silence or even a shred of respectful sympathy, said, “I’d love to see it, but, before you ask, I absolutely refuse to go along and possibly share in her censure.”
    Geoffrey chose to give Elias no further satisfaction on that score. Instead, he found himself asking, “So, do you find her pretty? Alessandra?”
    Elias managed to not grin any more widely, but his voice was smooth as silk when he answered, “More than pretty. When last I saw her, she was growing into an actual beauty.”
    “Yes, she has rather.”
    They finally allowed themselves to look directly into each other’s eyes. Though their dispositions were far from being alike, instead of having been brothers who hated each other all during their youthful years, they had been grand companions. They had shared every kind of adventure, and knew each other well, the friendship they had formed spilling over naturally into adulthood. And now they could only see in each other’s eyes how nearly inconceivable it was that Geoffrey, the responsible elder brother, should find himself in the position of having—however unintentionally—compromised a girl into marriage. The thought flashed between their interlocked eyes, held and twisted between them tautly, until