Mia Marlowe Read Online Free PDF Page B

“her ladyship” would increase her sisters’ chances for good matches. And most especially, Dougal might be saved from a hemp necktie by virtue of this union. The marriage must proceed, whether she had a willing bridegroom or not.
    Whether her ghostly protector approved or not.
    “Hear me well, Brodie MacIver,” she said softly. It wouldn’t do for anyone to catch her talking to herself in the kitchen. A body could get a reputation for being touched in the head in short order. “Ye’ll no’ show yourself to Lord Bonniebroch. Ye’ll no’ set his boots afire nor send your cold breath down the back of his neck. If I hear ye’ve played even one of your fox’s tricks on him, I’ll . . . I’ll—”
    “Ye’ll what?” Brodie swirled around her, his bearded face gleaming with smugness. “No’ much ye can threaten a ghost with, is there? I’m already deid, ye ken.”
    “If ye haunt Lord Bonniebroch,” she said evenly, “I’ll never speak to ye again.”
    Brodie stopped circling and paled whiter than his usual spectral self.
    “Ye wouldna.”
    “Try me.”
    Brodie pressed his lips tightly together and steam spewed out his ears. To someone who didn’t know him well, it would have seemed a horrendous sight. Lucinda merely arched a bored brow.
    “Dinna think to scare me with a tantrum,” Lucinda said tartly as she poured up a bit of rum for her aunt. “If ye wish my good opinion of ye to continue, help me instead. What am I to do to make Lord Bonniebroch take a liking to me?”
    Brodie grumbled under his breath about ungrateful wenches and their persnickety ways as he floated back up to the ceiling again and made a slow circuit of the room.
    “’Tis no’ that there’s anything wrong with ye, ye ken. Ye’re a right fetching lassie. Even yon dunderheid in the parlor canna keep his eyes off ye.”
    She looked up at him in surprise.
    “Oh, aye, a lass might take no’ notice, but a man can tell when another fellow fancies a girl.”
    Lord Bonniebroch didn’t fancy her. He’d all but rejected her entirely. “Ye’re no’ a man, Brodie. No’ any more. Ye dinna ken what ye’re talking about.”
    “But I was a man. And some things dinna die with the rest. I tell ye, yon Lord Bonniebroch may be fightin’ on the hook but the way he looks at ye when ye dinna see . . .”
    “What about it?”
    “Let’s just say ’tis a look filled with imagination.”
    “Imagination?”
    “Aye. Ofttimes a woman’s best asset is a man’s imagination and yon laddie is imagining ye fit to burst.”
    Lucinda considered this astounding idea as she fetched some clotted cream for the bannocks and milk for the tea from the cool larder. “Imagining me doing what?”
    “Doin’ most anything long as ye’re bare as an egg whilst ye’re doin’ it.”
    “Brodie MacIver! I’ll thank ye to keep a civil tongue in your head. I’m sure Lord Bonniebroch thinks of no such thing.”
    The ghost made a derisive sound. If he’d been alive, Lucinda would have been hard-pressed to guess which end of him it issued from.
    “If he doesna fancy seein’ ye parade around in naught but yer skin, then he’s no’ much of a man. Answer me honest, lass. Can ye tell me truly ye havena wondered what he looks like beneath his blasted MacGregor plaid?”
    Heat crept up her neck and flamed her cheeks. What was hidden under Alexander Mallory’s plaid-swathed jacket and tight-fitting trousers had tickled her imagination even before she learned he was her intended. She turned her attention back to the tray and furiously rearranged the napkins.
    “If, as ye claim, he’s doing this imagining about me, why is he trying to cry off on our betrothal?”
    “That I dinna ken, but ’tis no’ because he doesna like ye. Part of him likes ye fine.”
    Lucinda sighed. She knew she ought not to hope for anything more in an arranged match, but mere liking seemed such a pale imitation of what she really craved.
    Love. Ungovernable. Overturning.