A Valentine Wedding Read Online Free PDF

convinced that he was. So much so that people tended to go along with him. She and Ned had been rare exceptions. But then, they knew Alasdair Chase better than anyone.
    Or at least, Emma amended, Ned might have done.She had deceived herself into believing that she knew him … could trust him absolutely.
    Emma rose from the secretaire and went to the fire. She rested a hand on the mantel and stood looking down at the flames, remembering the first time she’d met Alasdair Chase. She’d been eight years old that summer when Ned had brought his friend home from Eton for the long vacation. And she’d fallen instantly in love with the fourteen-year-old Alasdair, trailing after him the entire summer like a devoted puppy. He’d had his own style even then. The daredevil carelessness that still marked him, still made him so attractive … so dangerous.
    He’d encouraged Ned to get up to all kinds of mischief. They’d roamed the forest at night, watching badgers and foxes; they’d taken sailing boats out onto the Solent in every kind of wild weather, under the moon and under the sun. They’d ridden the earl’s unbroken hunters and taken guns from the gun room, disappearing for hours at a time on shooting excursions, sending the household into a frenzy of panic. But somehow Alasdair’s charm had always averted the worst consequences. His charm and his undoubted competence. The unbroken hunter became as putty under his hands; he was a superb shot and never returned to the house without a full game bag; he swam like a fish and sailed like a mariner. And he seemed unafraid of anything.
    The earl, like everyone else, had fallen under his spell. Alasdair’s insouciant lawlessness had gone unpunished, and Ned had grown ever bolder in his friend’s image. After that summer, Alasdair had become a permanent visitor to Grantley Manor. His own father was not interested in him. His brothers were all much older than he. His mother was a brokendab of a woman who probably didn’t notice whether her youngest son came home for the school holidays or not. Quite who had decided that Alasdair would make his home with Ned’s family, no one really knew. But Emma guessed it was Alasdair himself.
    Emma had attached herself to her brother and his friend with limpetlike determination. And most times they’d accepted her with the lofty carelessness of youths basking in the hero worship of their juniors.
    A log fell in the hearth, breaking Emma’s reverie. She bent to poke it back, the heat warming her face. It was music that had wrought the change in their relationship. Music that had prompted Alasdair to treat her as an equal. Oh, he’d continued to tease her, continued to behave toward her with the casual ease of long friendship, but at some point, before she’d even begun to put up her hair, he had started to take her seriously.
    He’d heard her playing one afternoon, at the point when she had discovered that music was no longer a drudgery of practice and scales but a source of delight. Until that moment, Alasdair had played only for himself, at night when the house was quiet. He had never revealed his gift. Only Ned knew of it, knew that his friend used music to ease his black moods, the waves of loneliness that came over him sometimes. And not even Ned understood how completely Alasdair used music to express all his emotions.
    Emma had discovered that quickly enough. She and Alasdair shared both the passion and the need. And they were equally matched. Throughout the season of their engagement, they had played together, sometimes purely for their own pleasure, but often for the pleasure of others. They had become a regularentertainment at soirees and country house parties. Until everything went bad….
    Who was Alasdair’s light-of-love this time?
    The question reared its sickening head and Emma turned away from the fire. It was certain he had one. Alasdair always had a woman in his life. In fact, more than one, she reflected bitterly. The