Dreams of Desire Read Online Free PDF Page B

wonderful thing might happen.
    “I want you to remain,” he insisted. “I want you in my home.”
    “It will be a nightmare for me.”
    “No, it won’t. I’ll protect you.”
    The words sounded strange, as if they’d been spoken by another man, one who was considerate and sympathetic to the needs of others as he never was.
    “Promise me you won’t leave,” he said.
    She sighed. “I won’t.”
    “If you sneak off in the dark, I’ll be very worried. Promise me you’ll be here in the morning. Swear it to me.”
    “I swear I’ll be here.”
    There were a dozen other, more personal comments he wanted to utter, but he didn’t dare, and he was alarmed by the odd sentiments that kept flaring when she was near.
    He seemed to . . . to . . . like her more than he should, but it would be entirely inappropriate for any relationship to develop.
    “You’ll be fine,” he vowed. “I’ll see to it.”
    Though he knew it was wrong, he couldn’t resist reaching out and tracing a finger across her lips. Then he turned and ran as if the hounds of Hell were nipping at his heels.

Chapter 4

    “I’M beggared.”
    “After your shenanigans in Town last month, I’m not surprised.”
    “I could use an infusion of cash.”
    “I bet you could.”
    Edward Middleton glared at John, and he struggled to keep his fury in check. He’d provided John with a dozen openings to cough up some money, but John was being maddeningly tight-fisted. As usual.
    With John being thirty and Edward twenty-seven, Edward had dealt with John’s temperament for nearly three decades. It was pointless to quarrel with him. He was stoic and unflappable and couldn’t be swayed by emotional argument. Any request had to be posed with levity, as if the matter was unimportant.
    They were sequestered in John’s library, with John seated behind his desk and wallowing in the pomp of his position like a blasted king. He looked cool and composed, while Edward had been up all night, drinking and carousing at the village tavern.
    Rumpled and unshaven, his head throbbed with a hangover. He was dying to stagger over to the sideboard and pour himself a whiskey, needing to imbibe a little hair of the dog to quell his shaking hands, but it was just what John would expect him to do. Edward wouldn’t grant him the satisfaction of being right.
    “I don’t suppose,” Edward casually pressed, “you could lower yourself to extend an advance. The next quarterly payment from my trust fund isn’t due for six weeks.”
    “I know, but I don’t see how your fiscal difficulties are my problem.”
    “Give a bloke the benefit of the doubt, would you? I’ve had a run of bad luck. It wouldn’t kill you to relinquish a few pounds. You have plenty. Why not share?”
    Edward grinned, but John didn’t grin back.
    “I’d rather not,” John said.
    “Listen, old fellow—”
    “Don’t call me old . I’m your brother, not your father.”
    “Yes, well, you act like a decrepit penny-pincher. It’s hard to remember that we’re only three years apart in age.”
    “Three years older, but a lifetime wiser.”
    John’s sanctimonious attitude was beginning to grate, and even though Edward had planned to stay calm, he was in it up to his neck financially.
    “Damn it all, John, must you be such a miser?”
    “Yes, I must.”
    “You’re so bloody smug, with your title and your properties and your overflowing bank accounts.”
    “I can’t help it that I was born before you, and I can’t change the British laws of inheritance.”
    “If it hadn’t been for your whore of a mother marrying Father first, I’d be earl now instead of you.”
    “Yes, you would be.”
    The remark about his mother, Barbara, was despicable, and Edward shouldn’t have uttered it, but true to form, John evinced no reaction. The man was carved from stone. He had nerves of steel. Nothing moved him; nothing upset him.
    “How am I to carry on while you’re out of the country?” Edward inquired.