A Kiss to Remember Read Online Free PDF

beyond in the lumbering form of Tooley Grantham, she turned away from the manor and plunged deeper into the wood. Between caring for Lady Eleanor in her last days and managing the manor since her death, there had been little time in the past few months to wander. Or dream.
    The sun-dusted shadows seemed to beckon her forward. Even though Laura was old enough to know she was unlikely to encounter anything more dangerous than a cranky hedgehog or a patch of poisonous toadstools, she still found the wood’s illusion of mystery irresistible. As she ventured deeper into the forest, the web of branches overhead grew more tangled, filtering the sunlight and lacing the air with a delicious chill.
    As she wandered, her thoughts strayed back to her dilemma. How could she bear to wed a Huey or a Tom or a Tooley when she’d always dreamed of marrying a.
    Gabriel or an Etienne or a Nicholas? If she married a Nicholas, she could call him Nick when they had a lovers’ spat and Nicky in moments of great passion. Of course, she’d never had a moment of great passion, but she remained optimistic. And he would call her by some pet name like … well, Pet. She was so busy pondering the charms of the imaginary gentleman she was going to marry that she nearly walked right into the rock-strewn gorge that bisected her path.
    She was turning to go in search of a fallen log to use for a bridge when she saw him.
    She froze, blinking rapidly. It wasn’t the first time she’d had to blink away her fancies in this wood. As a child, she’d often had to pause and blink madly, turning a forbidding face into the gnarled trunk of an elder or a grizzled dwarf back into the squat rock he’d been all along.
    But this time her frantic blinking was to no avail. She closed her eyes, counted to ten, then opened them.
    He was still there, sleeping on a bed of moss at the edge of the gorge beneath the broad boughs of the oldest oak in the wood.
    Laura drifted toward him, mesmerized. She might not have seen him at all if a stray sunbeam hadn’t pierced the gloom, bathing him in its golden glow.
    She knelt beside him, her dismay growing as she noted how still and pale he was. Her fingers trembled as she unbuttoned the top two buttons of his waistcoat and slipped her hand inside. The crisp lawn of his shirt molded itself to her hand with each steady rise and fall of his chest.
    Laura didn’t realize she had been holding her own breath until she sagged against him, going dizzy withrelief. His heartbeat was strong and true beneath her palm. He was alive.
    But how had he come to this place? Laura anxiously scanned the underbrush. There was no sign of a horse, no telltale hints of a skirmish. Had he been the victim of foul play? An attempted abduction perhaps or a highwayman’s attack? Such crimes were almost unheard-of in the sleepy little village of Arden and the surrounding countryside, but then again, so were handsome strangers dressed in elegant finery. Laura rummaged through the pockets of his riding coat. His purse was still as intact as the mystery of his appearance.
    It was as if he’d dropped right out of the sky.
    She sat back on her heels, her eyes widening.
    There could be no denying that he had the face of an angel. Not the plump, rosy cherubs Lottie was so fond of sketching in her primer, but the towering seraphim who guarded the gates of heaven with their flaming swords. His was a purely masculine beauty, strong of brow and rugged of jaw. His regal cheekbones and the hollows beneath them gave his face a faintly Slavic cast, but the ghost of a dimple in his right cheek dispelled any notion that he might be given to brooding.
    Laura tilted her head to study him with a critical eye. Although there was a faint dusting of gold along the backs of his hands, most of his wavy, fair hair seemed to be growing on his head instead of out of his ears or nose. She leaned toward him, sniffing warily. The scent of some masculine soap—crisp, yet rich—emanated