How a Lady Weds a Rogue Read Online Free PDF Page B

alliance. It was true that her sister and stepsisters seemed content with their husbands, but there were a lot of money and carriages and houses involved. For pity’s sake, Serena was now a countess, so of course she was happy.
    But their brother, Tracy, avoided marriage, and Diantha couldn’t doubt why. True love was a fiction of legends. And so too heroes must be.
    She closed her eyes and tried not to think about the handsome man she would be leaving behind who was—however wonderful—only a man, after all.

Chapter 4
    B y eleven o’clock Wyn could nearly see the bottom of the bottle. This was not due to his excellent vision.
    The taproom was still crowded, the inn the favorite local haunt of townsfolk and farm laborers celebrating the end of the harvest. Too much festivity for his tastes at present. Pushing the last of the brandy away, he pressed to his feet and wove his way through tables of boisterous men to the door to the mews. The horses must be checked. Bedding must be dry. The stall must be mucked—even by him, if need be. He’d done it plenty of times before he’d even had a horse of his own.
    The night without was black, a single lamp illuminating the entrance to the stable. He crossed the pebbly drive, boots splashing, and slid open the door. He stepped inside and closed the panel, shutting out the muffled sounds of merriment in the inn and the light from the drive.
    Not a yard away, a breath hitched in the darkness. A light sound, and high.
    And then she cast herself at him.
    She was perfectly curved where his hands met and clasped her waist, and quivering. Her breaths came fast against his chin.
    Then he did what he would not have done if he had not consumed an inch shy of the contents of a bottle of brandy in the course of three hours, or if he had employed all his senses at that moment, not only his starved sense of touch—for instance, his sense of smell, which would have told him that he did not hold a barmaid in his hands: He pulled her against him. What else did a wench intend of a man deep in his cups when she threw herself at him in the dark so close upon midnight?
    She gasped and stiffened. Then she pressed her cheek to his jaw and breathed, “Help me.”
    If not for the lurching crash that sounded down the row of stalls, and the rough curse from that direction, Wyn would have behaved quite differently at this moment as well, even deep in his cups.
    He did not release Miss Lucas, though every corner of his muddled mind shouted at him to do so. Instead he turned to shield her with his body, pressed her back against the wall, and whispered into her ear, “Put your arms about me and be still.”
    She obeyed. It took no effort to hold her and ready his stance at once. She was soft, and now that he had engaged all his senses— God she smelled good— and he was more accustomed to being at a ready stance than not. He drew up the hood of her cloak and his hand brushed curls silky as butter.
    Heavy footsteps advanced.
    “Where are you, my pretty poppy?” a thick voice slurred. “Come out like a good girl, or I’ll be none too happy when I find you.”
    Miss Lucas’s body gave a little shudder. Wyn bent his head, hiding her more fully in case the man’s vision should be accustomed to the dark. He could confront him, but the tread suggested a large fellow, and Wyn was admittedly not at his best with a quart of brandy beneath his belt and no food for days.
    The footsteps shuffled on the straw and came to a halt.
    “What’s this?” A pause. “Oh, beg pardon, old chap. Just looking for my own bit of skirt, don’t you know.”
    “Sod off, ‘old chap.’ ” Wyn had no trouble roughening his voice. The caress of her tender earlobe across his lips had rendered his throat a desert.
    The man muttered and clomped to the door, slid it open, then threw it shut behind him.
    She ejected a relieved sigh and her fingers loosened their grip on his back. But Wyn did not release his captive. The brandy in