Linda Needham Read Online Free PDF Page A

Mrs. Rooney was carrying the bundle in her own arms safely back to wherever the devil it had come from.
    “And who was that?” he asked again, sure that he hadn’t been heard the first time.
    “Mrs. Rooney,” she said, her hand on her hip. “My ghillie’s mum.”
    “I mean the child, dammit!” he said, aware that he’d made her flinch. “Who is she?” And what the devil was a ghillie?
    A scowl flicked one of her brows. “You mean Sarah. She’s Mr. Foggerty’s little girl. Mrs. Rooney rounds her up for bedtime. Now come, Colonel, I’m sure you’ll want to settle in.”
    She lifted the hem of her skirts and continued up the stairs, trailing her mysteries and her compelling scent.
    He followed her for two more flights, suddenly wondering where she’d gotten the large staff required to polish the oak and brass.
    And what about Hawkesly Hall itself? Had she closed it up completely? Had she turned it into a school for thieves, or debutantes?
    “Your room is up here, Colonel.” She opened a narrow service door hidden within the paneling and then climbed the narrowing stairs.
    Jared followed, suddenly suspicious, not remembering this particular staircase. Or the stuffy heat—or the cool of the exterior stone wall. And certainly not the quarter turn of the stairs before she opened the door above and stepped into the corridor.
    Feeling suddenly like a lamb to the slaughter, Jared stepped hesitantly past her, imagining that his devious, suspicious-acting bride was about to knock him in the head. He’d wake up in the morning with a throbbing headache in the hold of a ship bound for Nanking.
    They were in the attic, low-ceilinged and dim, the uneven-planked passage lit by the last shreds of the orange sky sliding over the sill of a window at the far end of the corridor. He’d been so distracted watching hiswife’s hips swaying and shifting in front of him that he hadn’t been counting the turns of the stairs.
    “I warned you, Colonel. It’s not what you’re used to.” She lifted a brow as she brushed past him and then continued down the corridor, her head just inches from the rafter beam.
    And those perfectly formed hips swaying just slightly, dancing, beckoning his hands.
    Cool your heels, old man, you’ve a shady plot to uncover.
    And a marriage to begin.
    He stooped his shoulders and started after her, losing her for a moment around a quick corner and then another, until she was climbing another, incredibly narrow, but shorter set of stairs and opening still another door.
    “Your room, Colonel.” She met him with a smug, poorly hidden smile. “Here in the old fourteenth-century bell tower.”
    Jared held back on the narrow landing, trying to focus on the woman’s plotting, but enjoying the view of her ankles instead, intrigued by her sturdy boots, the dust and the polish and the scrapes.
    Imagining those ankles bare and sliding through his hands, her calves and—
    “Don’t you want to see it, Colonel?”
    He grabbed a breath. Grateful for the dimness of the stairwell, Jared swallowed and nodded as he started up the stairs. “I do indeed, madam.”
    “Watch your head.” She was already in the room, covering the ridge of the sharply angled door framewith her hand and tugging on his sleeve to keep his head bent. “Here it is, Colonel, as unpleasant as I promised.”
    Jared found himself face to face, then nose-to-nose, with her as he slipped slowly through the doorway. Could have been hip to hip, if he’d pressed his advantage.
    Which probably wouldn’t have been a very good idea, given the moment and his head full of her scent and the roiling suspicions tumbling around inside.
    “Badger’s Run promised me a great deal, madam.” He turned away from her too quickly and immediately crashed his knees into the foot of the small bed. He would have pitched forward, but the woman grabbed hold of his elbow and he turned back to her, closer than ever, his shoulders stooped.
    “The room is quite