A Shocking Proposition Read Online Free PDF

He looked tired, she realized, as though he’d slept badly. Dark shadows wreathed his eyes, and his mouth looked grim. As though he had as many worries nipping at his heels as she did.
    “Tea will be fine,” he said.
    * * *
    As they struggled through the niceties of him removing gloves, great coat and muffler and drawing near the fire, along with Maddy’s stilted remarks about the weather and it being a long ride from his home, Ash wondered if she might be regretting her letter. The dog had remained with them, close by Maddy’s side. Ketch had not so much as growled at him again, but Ash knew that at the least threat to Maddy the dog would be in front of her, ready to defend. He’d once seen the dog take down a tramp who had threatened her.
    He waited until an elderly woman had appeared with a tea tray, along with a suspicious glare for him. She set the tray at one end of the huge refectory table, where it looked as though Maddy had been attending to some business, and left them.
    “Will you be seated, sir?”
    At the polite invitation, he said simply, “You called me Ash the other day. Are we back to ‘sir’ and ‘Miss Kirkby’?”
    She flushed. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
    “After that letter?” He snorted as he sat down. “Curiosity, if nothing else, would have got me here.”
    He watched her as she poured the tea, handed him a cup and a piece of shortbread. Her tawny hair was pinned up simply, as though she had no time for more, and the shadows he’d seen beneath her eyes the other day had deepened. Now he knew what had put them there, knew he could lift the weight of care from her slender shoulders.
    He sipped his tea. “Why me, Maddy?” His conversation with Blakiston had been illuminating, but he wanted to know why she would take this risk. Because it was a risk for her. She knew so little about him and marriage could potentially hand him complete control of her lands and person. Why had she chosen to trust him?
    Her cup rattled in its saucer as she set it down. “Why? Because it’s that or lose Haydon.”
    “There were other fellows, Maddy. Men you knew better, who were prepared to brave Montfort’s bluster and marry you. You refused them all.”
    She bit her lip. “They didn’t actually want Haydon. Just the price of its sale, or the acres and the money they could get for letting the house, or even demolishing it for the stone. The Wall, too.”
    His gut twisted, and as if she knew, she looked up and met his gaze. “Nor would it have saved my household. They would all have lost their positions, their homes.”
    He nodded, slowly. Blakiston had already told him this. She could have saved herself by marriage, but for her it had been all or nothing. He knew from Blakiston that she ran Haydon efficiently. It wasn’t a massive holding, but it was productive. She was managing perfectly well by herself. She didn’t really need a husband; she just needed to save her home from Montfort.
    And for himself? It would be the chance he wanted to excavate a stretch of the Wall uninterrupted. See if he was right about there being a fort on the northeast corner of Haydon land near the river.
    And there was Madeleine Kirkby, herself. The sort of woman who had chosen to stand with her people rather than save herself. The sort of woman who could haunt a man’s dreams...
    He glanced around as they drank their tea. The great hall looked much as he remembered it. Once, he thought, the walls would have been covered in tapestries, bright and glowing in the firelight. Instead, someone in the last century or so had added paneling in a rich, gleaming oak. Worn Turkish carpets were scattered here and there on the wide-planked floor. There were no paintings, but a pair of crossed swords beside the fireplace.
    He gestured to them. “Why not above the fireplace?”
    She raised her brows. “Harder to get at in a hurry.”
    Wry amusement made him smile. “Do you think the Scots are going to come marauding