Mistletoe and Mischief Read Online Free PDF Page A

afraid so. My great-uncle, to be precise.”
    Charles put his hand to his brow, but realized with surprise that his headache had gone. He looked up instead.
    “Dare-devil Davenport?”
    She nodded.
    “Dreadnought Davenport?”
    She smiled apologetically.
    Charles concluded hopelessly, “He'll have my hide.”
    Louisa chuckled. “I shouldn't worry. He's mellowed considerably since his fighting days. The gout has had a beneficial effect upon his temper. He's not so daring anymore.”
    “Perhaps he's left that to you.” She had escaped from such a guardian, and yet she was returning to him without any particular sign of fear. Charles could not decide whether to be impressed by her courage or appalled by her foolhardiness. “How did you manage to run off without his knowing?”
    “I used the drainpipe.”
    “Good Lord!”
    Louisa arched her brows. “They are sturdier than you think. And I did not do it in broad daylight, so you needn't look so shocked!”
    “But–” Charles felt the questions, which had brewed inside him all day, threaten to burst out. “ But why did you do it? Did the general disapprove of this Geoffrey fellow?”
    “The general does not want me to marry at all. He says I am too young.”
    “And are you?”
    “Not at all! I am eighteen! So you see how unreasonable he is. He wasn't willing to bring me out this year, and he refuses to let me marry until I've been properly brought out.”
    “What's wrong with that?”
    Louisa raised her eyes impatiently. “Nothing. I daresay you would agree with him.”
    Charles frowned in confusion. “But what a strange girl you are! Don't you wish to attend balls and assemblies?”
    “Of course! I would enjoy them. But one can go to balls and assemblies just as easily after one is married, and there are many things one absolutely cannot do until one is married!”
    “Good–” Charles choked on another oath. He could not truly believe that Louisa meant to imply what she seemed to be implying.
    She looked at him, her eyes wide with innocence. He decided he must have misunderstood her. All the same, he judged it time to steer the conversation down a different path.
    “And this Geoffrey fellow–he proved to be a fortune-hunter, did he?”
    Louisa bit her lower lip and peered down at her napkin. “I'm afraid that may have been the case. You will say I was foolish, and rightly so, but I was anxious to be married, and I overlooked too much. I thought he did love me and that I should come to love him, as well. But on the first day out of London, my suspicions were aroused.”
    She gazed at him again, the blue of her eyes made deeper by dismay.
    “Would you credit it, sir? Not once during that day did he even try to kiss me! “
    Charles drew up, startled. A grin teased the corners of his mouth, but he suppressed it out of a sense of decorum. “Did it not occur to you, Louisa, that he might be demonstrating his respect for you?”
    “Piffle!” said Louisa. “What respect should he show to a girl who had just eloped with him?”
    Then, when he looked disapprovingly at her, she gave a little shrug. “Well, to be truthful, I did consider that at first, but it became quite clear to me that he was more interested in the horses our post boys were riding than in me. On the second day I asked him to turn back, but he would not hear of it. He said I was compromised, and we had better go through with it.”
    “Precisely as he should have thought.”
    “Yes, but by then, you see, I had come to the dreadful realization that I did not love him and never could. And far, far worse,” she added quietly, “I had decided that I did not want to marry someone I could not love.”
    A queer feeling rose in Charles's throat. He cleared it, but did not know what to say. Many things came to him: homilies, platitudes, the “I told you so” variety of lecture. He kept them to himself.
    “Then it is fortunate you discovered this before you were married,” he said