Dark Angel / Lord Carew's Bride Read Online Free PDF

realized. Lionel was standing close before her, holding her hand, gazing into her eyes, asking her to be his wife. And then he smiled, dispelling any fear there might have been of coldness in his addresses, revealing perfect white teeth. She felt the old welling of excitement and love.
    “Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, my lord.” She got to her feet, not having planned to do so, not knowing quite why she did so.
    “Then you have completed the happiness that began in my life five years ago,” he said, and raised her hand to his lips.
    She knew suddenly why she had stood up. They were standing very close. They were alone together for the first time. He had just proposed marriage and she had just accepted. She wanted him to kiss her lips. Sheblushed at the realization of just how improper her unconscious wish had been. She hoped he had not guessed.
    He behaved with the utmost propriety. He returned her hand to her side and took a step back. “You have made me the happiest of men, Miss Winwood,” he said.
    She wanted him to call her Jennifer and wondered if she should say so. But perhaps it would be too forward. She wanted him to invite her to use his given name as she had used it in her dreams for five years. But she realized suddenly that the stiffness and formality of his manner must be the result of embarrassment. It must be so much more of an ordeal for a man to make an offer than for a woman to receive it. The woman’s role was passive while the man’s was active. She tried to imagine their roles reversed. She tried to imagine how she would have felt earlier this morning waiting for him to arrive if she had known that she must take the initiative, that she must speak the words of the offer. She smiled at him in sympathy.
    “And you have made me happy too, my lord,” she said. “I shall devote my life to your happiness.”
    They were saved from further conversation by the return to the salon of their parents, expectant looks on their faces. In all that followed, Jennifer held on to her happiness, to her knowledge that now, after so long, it was finally official, irrevocable, that her happiness had been signed and sealed.
    They were to be married at the end of June. In the meanwhile they were to spend a month enjoying the activities of the Season in company together—or as muchin company as propriety would allow—before their betrothal was officially announced and celebrated in a grand dinner and ball at the Earl of Rushford’s mansion. And then another month would follow before the wedding would actually take place.
    The end of June. Two months. In two months’ time she would be the Viscountess Kersey. Lionel’s bride. And during those two months she was to dance with him at balls and assemblies, sit with him at dinners and concerts, attend the theater and the opera with him, drive out with him, walk out with him. Get to know him. Get to feel comfortable with him. Become his friend.
    And then his wife forever after. His lifelong companion. The mother of his children.
    It was too much like heaven, she thought, glancing across the room at him while their fathers talked. He was looking back, unsmiling again. Two months during which to dispel the slight discomfort that made this morning just a little less than perfect. Except that it was perfect, she told herself determinedly. The awkwardness was to be expected. They scarcely knew each other despite the fact that for five years they had been intended for each other. They had not even met for over a year. And a proposal of marriage would be a strained occasion even in the most ideal of circumstances.
    Oh, yes, everything was perfect. Except that perfection was an absolute state, and she knew that what had begun this morning was going to get better during the following two months and even better at the end of June.
    She was the happiest woman alive, she told herself.She was in love with the most handsome man in the world and she was betrothed to him—officially