Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

laughter might choke him.
    “We shall speak no more of this, Justine,” he said at last. “I'll return you to the castle.”
    “No.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “I said no. I must be completely honest with you, just as you have always been completely honest with me. My main reason for coming here was to look after your motherless children. I
need
to be needed. There. I have told you the way of things.”
    Involuntarily, he touched her cheek. “You are needed.” He stroked that soft skin and saw the tears spring again. This time they did not trouble him. “Your grandmother—”
    “My grandmother, pah!” Justine said of the formidable Dowager Duchess of Franchot. Tears overflowed and coursed downward. The tip of her tongue darted out to catch one.
    Struan watched her tongue and felt something close to a blow in his gut. “Yes, your grandmother needs you.”
    “That is not the kind of need I require.” She turned her face away. In profile, the moisture on her cheek shone silver in the firelight. “I shall never have children of my own—a source of great disappointment I've been forced to accept. But in the short time I spent with them, I fell in love with Ella and Max. And they need a female's care, do they not?” She turned back and stared hard at him. “A gentle guiding hand in all things?”
    “Well …”
    “Do they not?”
    “I suppose …”
    “Of course they do. And I shall be the provider of that care until you marry again. We'll send for my things in the morning. I shall be living here with you.”

Chapter Three
    S louched in a chair near her side, Struan watched Justine sleep.
    With her legs once more stretched out on the daybed and her head turned so that her chin rested on her shoulder, she looked very young—and very vulnerable.
    He got up from the deep leather wing chair he'd pulled close as soon as her eyes had shut, and piled more wood on the fire. Beyond the circle of its warmth, the big room was chilly. Outside the lodge, the storm raged.
    Struan eased down into his chair, rested his elbows on its worn old arms, and steepled his fingers. The woman who slept on could not begin to guess the dilemma she'd presented him—or the battle she forced him to wage with his own selfish desires.
    Her thick lashes rested, quite still, upon her cheeks. Although fatigue had made her pale, there was a bloom on her skin. In repose, her features were soft, the tumble of hair curly about her face. He'd already pulled his cloak up to her neck. She'd said, finally too sleepy to be quite clear, that she would “wait exactly here until the children got up.”
    She deserved to know the truth. All of it. But if he told her, she'd flee and never want to set eyes upon him again. Perhaps, since there could never be anything deeper between them, at least that much—the truth—would be best.
    But if he could only find a palatable way to reveal the small … no, the
huge
misconceptions she'd harbored about him since they'd met, there might be a chance … No, there was no chance.
    Ella and Max were not his children. True, they were brother and sister—but they were not related to him. They were not his offspring by a very early marriage that ended with the death of an uncultured, anonymous young wife. There had been no early marriage—no children—no tragic death. Arran and Grace knew. A fiery disagreement with Arran had been the result of that discussion, and Arran continued to be enraged by the dilemma Struan could not decide how to resolve. Calum and Pippa also knew the real story. They had encouraged the original fabrication as a means to secure the children's acceptance at Franchot Castle. But the truth had been kept from Justine, who so abhorred dishonesty of any kind.
    Oh, in Cornwall he'd intended to tell her exactly how he'd come by the orphans. Many times. But on every possible occasion something had intervened and, finally, he'd been forced to leave … No, not true. He hadn't been forced to leave