Celeste Bradley - [Heiress Brides 02] Read Online Free PDF Page A

gloves off with precise little snaps and gazed at her husband with her chin high. “My lord, if that is how you wish to do battle, you may take your parties and your balls and your outings and your new gowns and you may stuff them in your …” She bared her teeth. “Your arsenal.”
    She turned with great dignity to Fortescue. “I will retire to my chamber at once.”
    Fortescue’s gaze flicked back and forth from her to the Beast of Brookhaven for a moment, then he nodded crisply. “Of course, my lady. This way.”
    Deirdre knew the way perfectly well, for she’d lived in the house for weeks, but she grasped at any opportunity to begin again with the staff. Dear God, she’d be lucky to get last week’s cold bathwater from them now!

Chapter Five
    Calder stood in the hall and gazed after his butler and his bride for a long moment. That hadn’t gone quite as well as he’d planned.
    “You’ve buggered it now, Papa. She’s staying.”
    Calder closed his eyes, not needing to look down at the tangled head by his side. “There’s no need to be crude, Lady Margaret. That is not the sort of language proper young ladies use.”
    He walked away then, from his bride and his daughter and his staff—and from yet another mangled wedding day.
    This was getting to be a habit.
    Once in his study, he closed the door with the feeling of shutting out a howling, hair-raising storm. In the blessed silence he paced the length of the room. Details of the new paper factory he was building lay unrolled upon his desk, but he found himself unable to concentrate upon them. Back and forth, from fireplace to window, his gaze unseeing on the fine blue-and-gold carpet.
    At last Fortescue rapped twice on the door and entered. Only Fortescue was allowed in the study when Calder was working, and only because the severely
poised butler had a certain manner about him that allowed Calder’s concentration to remain focused.
    Without a word, Fortescue pulled a cloth from his pocket and began polishing the frame of the bucolic country landscape painting above the fireplace. It was a valuable work of art, but that wasn’t why Calder had it in his study. Like Fortescue, it did nothing to interfere with his concentration.
    Calder ran one hand over his face. “Women.”
    Fortescue made no comment. He merely continued to polish the frame with tiny precise circular motions.
    Calder frowned. “You think I handled that badly, do you?”
    Fortescue ignored him. The frame began to shine.
    Calder let out a breath. “Well, what was I to do when she defied me so openly? I fear she may be as shallow and unruly as her stepmother. Perhaps the experience of motherhood might do her good.”
    Polish, polish, polish.
    Calder let his hands fall to his sides. “I ought to have spoken to her about it first, I suppose.”
    Silence but for the friction of cloth on wood.
    “And I should have warned Meggie as well. I simply didn’t want to …” He shrugged. “It just seemed more efficient to tell them both at the same time!”
    Fortescue snapped his cloth and then began on the carved scrollwork of the mantel. He said nothing. He didn’t have to.
    Calder sighed. “But you’re right, of course. It was unfair to spring it on them like that, just to save myself the inconvenience of two explanations.”
    Fortescue tucked the cloth away into a pocket. “If you think so, my lord.” He straightened with his hands
clasped behind his back. “Will there be anything else, my lord?”
    “No, thank you, Fortescue.”
    The butler left smoothly, his shoes silent on the carpet, the door closing without the tiniest thud.
    Calder felt somewhat better. The problem was that the problem wasn’t going to go away. He’d married a defiant, willful woman when what he wanted was a compliant, obedient one.
    She had looked very fine though, standing there with high color in her cheeks and fury snapping in her sapphire eyes … .
    The thing of it was, he’d noticed her immediately that