My Enchanting Hoyden (A Once Upon A Rogue Novel, #3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

wager five pounds. And I’ll race astride the same as the two of you!”
    She expected him to be appropriately shocked by her outrageousness, but he appeared almost bored as he offered long, languid strokes to his horse’s side. The smirk on his face was unchanged.
    He stopped rubbing his horse and glanced around, as if looking for something or someone. “It appears, Miss Adair, that you are missing a horse on which to participate in this race. Pity that. I’d give ten pounds to see the look on Scarsdale’s face when a lady, an American to boot, bested him. He’s a pompous man and considers himself quite undefeatable, which is exactly why I’m forced to race him and remind him he’s a mere mortal.”
    Jemma frowned. He was supposed to scoff at her and tell her she could never best him or his friend. And preferably in a loud voice so more people would take note of her shocking breach of etiquette. He wasn’t playing his part at all. Of course, he wasn’t aware he had a part, but still...
    The skin of her arms prickled again, and she rubbed them. “So you’ve no objection to my riding astride or my racing you and His Grace?” She raised her voice as loud as she could without being too obvious.
    The conversation behind him stopped this time, and all eyes turned on her and Lord Harthorne. He smiled innocently, but there was a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Had you expected me to object?”
    Drat the man! He was too perceptive for his own blasted good. “Certainly not. I barely know you. How am I to know how you will react?” Some emotion flickered in his eyes, gone before she could discern it.
    “ If that’s true, you’re very wise for one so young.”
    So young? If it was true? “I’m nineteen since last week.”
    “Happy belated birthday,” he said with what sounded like genuine pleasantness.
    “Thank you,” she growled.
    “Nineteen. You must be fretting that you’re not married. Is that why you want to race? To shore up your spinster money?”
    She was about to flay him for his attitude when he began to chuckle. He was teasing her! Her own mouth pulled into a reluctant smile. “You— Why, you’re...you’re outrageous,” she sputtered.
    He tipped his hat to her. “So I’ve been told many times. I’d rather be shocking than boring, wouldn’t you?”
    Her jaw fell open at his pronouncement as Anne gasped beside her. “Why, Jemma said that very same thing two weeks ago!”
    Lord Harthorne’s smile turned into a grin. “ I know. I was there at the dinner table where she professed it.” His gaze locked on Jemma once again. “I was three seats down but well within earshot to overhear your declaration.”
    Why, the devil! He’d remembered her words and used them to bait her. Two could play that game. “I didn’t take you for the sort of man to purposely embarrass a lady,” Jemma chided.
    He froze in the action of handing his hat to Sophia and gaped at Jemma. “I’m terribly sorry. Truly, I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
    “You may make it up to me by agreeing not only to race me but to wager with me,” she replied, a smile playing at her lips despite her best effort to school her features.
    A bark of laughter escaped him. “Clever,” he said, his voice appreciative. “You’ve effectively trapped me and left me no honorable course but to agree to all your terms. But you still don’t have a horse.”
    Sophia winked at Jemma. “She can borrow mine.”
    The duchess waved a hand, and a servant walked Sophia’s gleaming black horse over to them. Jemma had confided in Sophia about her plan to race this morning because she was afraid if she’d tried to take a horse without a sidesaddle the stable master would have alerted her grandfather. She wanted him to find out, of course, but not until after the deed was done. Jemma hadn’t worried overmuch that Sophia wouldn’t agree to help. Sophia hadn’t always been a duchess. There was a time, before she’d married His Grace, when