Courting Susannah Read Online Free PDF Page A

reeling. Although she had every intention of rallying, she dropped off into a fathomless slumber instead and fell end over end into the sweet refuge of darkness.
    The next thing she knew, the room was draped in evening shadows, and a strong hand rested on her shoulder. She looked up and was startled into complete wakefulness, between one heartbeat and the next, to see Aubrey gazing down at her. Because of the relative gloom, she could not make out his expression.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she blurted, mortified beyond all endurance to be found lying prone on a man’s bed—particularly this man’s bed. “I must have—I don’t know what—”
    â€œShh,” he said, and she heard amusement in his voice, and something more tender. “There’s no harm done.”
    Susannah bolted upright, and Aubrey stepped back, giving her plenty of room. She pressed the fingertips of both hands to her temples after setting her feet on the floor, trying desperately to reorient herself. She went immediately to the cradle and saw that the baby was gone. She panicked a little.
    â€œShe’s downstairs with Maisie,” Aubrey said gently. Susannah had no right to be soothed by his tone, butshe was. Oh, heaven help her, she was. “There’s a fine supper waiting for you in the kitchen.”
    Susannah could not face him, not then. He made light of finding her sleeping, no doubt with abandon, on his bed, but in many quarters, such an infraction, however innocent, was enough to lay even the best reputation to ruin. “Thank you,” she said, keeping her head down and hurrying toward the doorway at top speed. Thus it was that she compounded her offense by colliding with Aubrey with such momentum that she surely would have fallen had he not grasped her shoulders and held her upright.
    â€œSusannah,” he said, “it’s all right.”
    Oddly, she found his kindness more difficult to endure than simple annoyance would have been, or even skepticism. “Yes,” she replied, with a sort of tremulous aplomb, addressing herself as much as him. “Everything is all right.”
    He let her go then and stepped back rather quickly. For once, he was the one to sound awkward. “I’ll carry the cradle to your room,” he said. “Then I’ll see you downstairs at supper.”
    She tried to speak and could not. Nodded and fled.
    She felt his smile like a kiss on the nape of her neck.

Chapter 2
    S usannah McKittrick was nothing like Julia, at least on the surface, Aubrey decided as he watched his uninvited houseguest trying to eat her supper slowly and with a measure of decorum. His late wife had been fashionably plump, even before her pregnancy, and never one to deny herself any sort of pleasure for the sake of appearances.
    Susannah, on the other hand, was thin, almost angular. Her perfect skin was pale, and it was obvious that she was half starved by the way her fork trembled as she raised it to her mouth. He wondered when she’d last taken a decent meal, but he had no intention of inquiring. Judging by the state of her clothing, she was practically destitute, and her pride might be all she had.
    Most likely, she wanted to take Julia’s child home to raise, though she hadn’t said so straight out. She was, if he recalled correctly, from Nantucket. Perhaps, he reflected, drawing his brows together and watching as Susannah cautiously speared a second portion of Maisie’s fried chicken, she expected a financial settlement of some sort. Provided that she was who she represented herself to be—a caring friend of Julia’s—such a bargain might be an expedient solution to the problem. But suppose she was a swindler instead? He had no real knowledge of her character. She might abandon the child—or worse—once she had the money, and he would never know the difference.
    Common decency prevented him from taking such a chance; he’d