Major Lord David Read Online Free PDF

too-real pallor. They had knelt by
his side and watched numbly as the blood pooled upon his
shirt. He had hissed to them to fetch Rawlinson, the old stable master, and Kit had scrambled up upon David’s horse and ridden away like the very devil. But Billie had been left to face
David’s accusing stare.

    “You … did this?” he had asked. And then he’d sworn at
her, repeatedly and incomprehensibly in French, before his
swoon had spared her.
    Within minutes help had arrived from Braughton. She and
Kit had been sent home, to wait in fear of a reckoning that
never arrived. Word had reached them that Lord David survived the ordeal. Billie had trusted and prayed that he would,
but she’d had no opportunity to apologize. In the subsequent
year she had seen him only twice more, and then only from a
distance. He had left for war on the Peninsula without a word
from her.
    Last night he’d claimed the shoulder still pained him in the
cold. She wondered if it troubled him now in the snow. The
wound must have inconvenienced him all the long years at
war. And as her pensive gaze left his shoulder and rose again
to his face, she caught the steady scrutiny in his.
    He was not asleep, if he had ever been, and both his boots
now neatly bracketed her cloaked skirts in a manner that was
simply not acceptable.
    Billie managed to turn one of her ankles and bring the pressure of her instep down atop his toes. With his grimace she
had to believe that, had he thought to play with her or to play
upon her guilty sympathies, he must now consider himself
corrected.
    “At last,” Morty muttered as they entered the drive to the
manor. “We might almost have walked it in this time.”
    “Some of us might have been limping by now though, Mr.
Caswell.” His gaze on hers, David sat up farther, carefully removing his boots from her reach.
    Billie could not stop her smile. She looked out the window.
She dared not glance at him again, for fear she might laugh
outright.

    When they drew up to the house, Morty moved to unlatch
the door facing the front and the waiting footman. But the major swiftly opened the door opposite and, leaping out sans the
step, pulled Billie out the far side. Before her startled senses
could recover, he had pressed his lips to hers. With equal
speed he put her away from him.
    He easily parried her raised, open palm. “We are betrothed,”
he told her smoothly.
    “You are mistaken!”
    “Then you must say so, Billie Caswell.”
    She swallowed and raised her chin. She could hear her father and brothers mounting the steps to the house.
    “What happened to `querida’?” she challenged.
    He brought his face very close to hers once more.
“`Querida’ is still there, if you wish it. But take care how you
punish a man, Miss Caswell. It must be proportionate to the
offense”
    He stepped away from her to the back of the carriage and
moved to free his horse.
    “What are you about there, Lord David?” her father called
from above. “You must come along inside here for some dinner.”
    “I think I’d best be getting back, Sir Moreton, before the
weather grows much worse”
    “Enjoy a meal, my lord, and let your horse be cared for. The
snow is nothing to speak of.”
    Billie thought her father had not sounded half so pleasant
all day; at home he was making an effort at courtesy. Yet she
wished they need no longer play at propriety. That David
Trent should think she punished him was galling. Surely having been forced to offer at all had been the punishment.
    She had walked on up to her father’s side. Let him go, she
silently urged him. Please, just let him go. Her gaze as cold as
she could muster, she willed the major to be on his way. They might talk another time. But the perverse man seemed to delight in crossing her.

    “Well, then,” he said, his smile provoking. “Perhaps for an
hour or two, sir. And we might finish discussing our business.”

They stomped into the hall.