How to Marry a Highlander Read Online Free PDF

careening and he was looking at her like a madwoman, which was a perfectly reasonable conclusion for him to come to. But the half smile still shaped his gorgeous mouth.
    “Saucy lass.”
    “If that is the worst you can say after I have offered such terms, then I begin to doubt your morals, my lord.”
    “I have no morals, Miss Finch-Freeworth. Didna ye learn that in yer research o’ me?”
    In the past three days of visiting acquaintances about London, when she had inquired of Lord Eads everybody always wanted to gossip about his unsavory past, his years in the East Indies and, more recently, years during which it was thought he’d been in London but no one in society ever saw him. Only yesterday Diantha had said in no uncertain terms that Lord Eads was not a man to be pursued. She refused to explain, but Teresa had rarely seen her good-natured friend so alarmed. “I . . . Someone might have mentioned it.”
    “An ye didna listen?” He shook his head. “No as clever as I’d been thinking ye, after all.”
    Her heart did a little skip. “You think me clever?”
    His eyes glimmered.
    “Clever enough to find husbands for five of your sisters?”
    He shook his head.
    “So then if you don’t believe I will, why won’t you agree to my terms?”
    He looked quite directly into her eyes. “I didna say I wouldna, did I?”
    Her entire body flushed with agitated heat. “You will?”
    “Ye drive a hard bargain.”
    He was laughing at her now. But she was, after all, laughable at this point. She smiled though she suspected she should not.
    “Then it seems we have a deal,” she said. “But . . .”
    “But?”
    “What if I manage to find seven husbands?”
    “Lass—”
    “What if I do?”
    His gaze hooded. “Name yer terms.”
    “Will you marry me then?”
    “Why would I marry a woman I dinna know from Eve who’s given away her virtue to a man in a wager?”
    “Not to any man. To y—” She bit her lip. “Oh. You are teasing me, aren’t you?”
    “I may be.”
    “I like it.”
    “Dinna become accustomed to it.”
    “Why? Won’t you tease me again?”
    “Aye. But ye havena asked ma terms.”
    “Oh! I didn’t think. I’m not in the habit of making wagers, you see.”
    “Ye dinna say?”
    “What are your terms, my lord?”
    “Ye’ve a month or the wager’s a forfeit.”
    “A month ? But I cannot possibly—”
    “Those be ma terms, lass. Accept or withdraw.”
    She pulled in a breath of courage. “I accept.” She thrust out her hand. “Shall we shake on it?”
    It was perhaps a mistake to seal the agreement in this manner. His hand was large and strong and encompassed hers entirely and made her feel tiny and entirely in his power. Perhaps the gossips weren’t spreading empty rumor. Perhaps he was a dangerous man and that longing gaze they had shared at the ball had been more dream than reality. A tremor of fear slithered through her.
    She forced her gaze up and glimpsed in his eyes the oddest hesitation. It looked almost like the fear she was feeling.
    “My lord,” she breathed. “I think perhaps—”
    The door snapped open. “Duncan!”
    Their hands flew apart. They both stepped back.
    Effie halted, eyes wide.
    Her twin skipped in behind her. “Abigail finished her book. She wants to go to the shop and trade it in for anither.”
    Sorcha came through the door removing her mended gloves. She stopped and they all stared at Teresa.
    “I should be going now.” She curtseyed. “My lord. My ladies.” She went past them and through the door and down the steps, heart in her throat and—for the first time since that night at the ball—an unsettling sensation of utter confusion spreading through her.
    S orcha turned to him. “What did she really want, Duncan? Money? I suppose ye put her to right aboot that.”
    Duncan stared out the open door through which his sisters were entering and through which she —the woman who had inspired his flight from London eighteen months