Daring Miss Danvers Read Online Free PDF Page A

now.”
    “Then what is she waiting for?”
    “You already know the answer.”
    Yes. He would have to marry someone of excellent character. Someone of whom his grandmother approved. The trouble was, he knew only one person who fit both requirements.
    His appetite left him and he pushed his plate away. He desperately needed a distraction from his thoughts. There had to be another solution, surely. That thought had plagued him the past two nights. Yet, each morning he awoke with the same conclusion.
    “Y ou’re whistling again,” Emma said to her brother as he stepped out of his chamber and into the hall. “Which can only mean you’re going on a trip.”
    With Rafe’s lips pursed, it drew her attention to the fashionably angled cut of his side whiskers. The style emphasized the definition of his cheekbones and jaw, two things their mother had commented on repeatedly while imploring him to model for her. His dark, wavy hair was artfully unkempt and a tad too long, but it seemed to suit his devil-may-care manner.
    He winked at her and touched the tip of her nose as if she were still in leading strings. “You think you know me so well, do you?”
    As confirmation, his valet stepped out from behind him. Under each arm, he carried a satchel and proceeded down the hall to the servants’ stairs after a hasty nod of acknowledgment.
    Rafe lifted his shoulders in a careless shrug. “No more than a month, I’d say. Are you going to miss me?”
    Of course she would, but she wasn’t about to feed his ego by telling him so. “You promised to be here for the beginning of the Season.”
    He’d missed all last year while away in the north of England, supposedly seeking a country estate. What he hadn’t realized was that she was old enough to know why he was really leaving town, and it had more to do with the widow Richardson than finding a place to hang his hat.
    “You know very well that the idea of attending balls and parties, enduring the company of simpering debutants and their oppressive mothers, is the last place I want to be,” he said as he cast a glance over his shoulder to his room. “Which is precisely why I’ve arranged for Rathburn to look after you. Although, I pity him—his title puts him at a severe disadvantage and forces him to attend these tedious events all for the sake of— What? Why are you glaring at me with such contempt?”
    His expression only displayed concern for an instant before he grinned, proving he wasn’t bothered by it. “I didn’t say you were a simpering debutante. However, I could hardly remain solely in your company. I can only presume you’ll want to dance, which will leave me with the obligation of either finding my own partner or enduring a conversation with one of those oppressive mothers I mentioned.” He touched the tip of her nose again, unaware of how close he was to losing that finger. “Surely, you would not wish such a fate on a most beloved brother.”
    Emma expelled a breath and tried to keep the trace of hurt from her voice. Not that he would notice. He was too busy preparing for his journey. “Is a brother who would abandon his sister to the care of a gentleman—whose surly attitude frightened away every possible dance partner last Season—beloved? I think not.”
    Apparently, Rafe thought she was joking, because he laughed. Draping an arm around her shoulders, he began to stroll companionably down the hall toward the stairs. “I had Rathburn give his word that he wouldn’t allow you to waste your time on unworthy candidates. After all, I don’t want to be saddled with a simpleton for a brother-in-law.”
    “Because of him there have been no candidates.”
    Of course, it went without saying that her father’s reputation might have had something to with it, as well. At one time, her father had been a respected portrait artist among the ton . Being a member of the peerage, and with most of society more comfortable sitting for one of their own, he’d been in