Bride Read Online Free PDF Page A

perhaps met some lady who appeals to your higher senses?”
    Struan stared at her, narrowed his eyes, and concentrated. “I beg your pardon?” His mind was truly suffering.
    “A lady,” she said. “Is there someone who has spoken to your heart, perhaps?”
    Oh, good God. She assumed he had somehow managed to find a mate in the middle of the disaster that was his life. “No, Justine. No—no lady has spoken to my heart.”
Other than you and I cannot have you.
    “Surely you must be considering the advisability of marrying again for the sake of your motherless children.”
    Naturally it was time for yet another of his damnable lies to surface—albeit a lie that began with the most honorable of intentions and which protected the children. “Actually, I had not been considering that particular matter.”
    “But you must,” Justine said, moving forward in her earnestness. She set aside his cloak and undid her own. “You build a fine fire, Struan. I declare I grow exceeding warm. It is essential for Ella and Max to be schooled in those areas that will ready them for the life of a viscount's offspring.”
    Struan felt suddenly truculent—and trapped. “They do well enough as they are.”
    “You have a tutor for them?”
    “No.”
    “A nanny?”
    “No.”
    “A dancing instructor for Ella?”
    “No.”
    “You take them to church yourself?”
    He shuddered. “No.”
    Justine shrugged free of her cloak and leaned even closer. “Struan, Ella is sixteen?”
    He began to feel particularly bloody. “When last I checked, yes, she was. Just.”
    “And Max must be eleven.”
    “Eleven follows ten. So you must be correct.”
    “Sin's ears.
This is worse than I had imagined!” The neck of Justine's black gown was demure, but the faintest hint of her breasts, trembling with ire now, showed above pleated velvet trim. “Get the children from their beds.”
    “Get the …” His mouth remained open, but he couldn't recall the rest of what he'd intended to say.
    Justine swept wide her arms to take in the gaudy room with its collection of outrageous furnishings from every country Struan's grandfather had ever visited. “I wish to see Ella and Max and assess the exact scope of the task that lies before me.”
    Struan glanced from her glittering eyes, to her moist and parted lips, to the rapid rise and fall of her breasts. Outrage did wonderful things for the cool Lady Justine. It made her absolutely irresistible—particularly to a man who hungered for emotion from a woman he admired. He truly admired Justine.
    And he must send her back to Calum and Cornwall before the entire Franchot clan—together with his own egotistical, judgmental brother—descended like an army with sabers drawn. If he set a hand on this woman, they'd draw lots for the honor of running him through.
    “Get them!”
    “I can't … I mean, absolutely not, Justine. I would not consider disturbing their rest. Let that be the last I hear of such an irresponsible suggestion.”
    “Oh.” She pressed her fingers to her mouth, and for an awful moment her eyes seemed to brim with tears. “Forgive me.” She blinked rapidly, loading her lashes with moisture but blessedly saving the tears.
    Struan ignored the battering of his own heart and patted the hand that rested on her knee. “You're tired, dear one. And a little overwrought, I shouldn't be surprised. You'll see the children soon enough.”
    “There are things I want,” she said, sounding strangled and entirely unlike herself.
    There were things
he
wanted—the devil take it. “You must rest, and then we'll see about getting you on your way wherever you're going.”
    “I'm going to write a treatise for young women.”
    Now he was puzzled.
    She went on. “Do you realize that everything that has been written about women—about women and men
together,
that is—has been written
by
men?”
    Oh, the hour grew very late. “That does not seem particularly surprising to me.”
    “No, no, of course it