Not Quite a Husband Read Online Free PDF Page A

took another swallow from the flask. She realized that he had not eaten much at all, had waved away the mulberry tart untouched.
    “I pretended to be your very angry brother and threatened to burn down the place,” he said.
    “You did not.”
    He screwed the cap on the flask and pocketed it. “I did pretend to be one of your stepbrothers; I didn’t have to pretend to be very angry. And no, I didn’t threaten violence. I merely pointed out, very reasonably, that it would be terrible for it to be known that an English lady of means had disappeared from the mission—people would instantly construe that she’d been done in for her money. That prospect frightened our missionaries quite a bit, though by that time they’d hemmed and hawed for so long that I was more than half ready for arson.”
    She chewed slowly on a forkful of tart, then patted the corners of her lips with a napkin. “It was not my intention to inconvenience you. I only wanted to get away.”
    He did not ask her from what she was trying toget away. She’d left England as soon as the annulment was granted, spent the rest of ’94 in Germany, most of ’95 in America, and arrived in India early in ’96. But the past, it seemed, had a way of catching up no matter how far she traveled.
    “Get some rest,” he said. “Tomorrow we start south.”
    He was the one who needed rest. The more she looked at him, the more he looked not just abruptly lean, but malnourished.
    “How long have you been on the road?”
    His brows furrowed. “I’ve lost track. Six and a half weeks. Seven. Something like that.”
    From Gilgit east to Leh, then from Leh back through Gilgit to Chitral and the Kalash Valleys: It must be close to a thousand miles. A thousand miles over a roadless land that was full of teeth and serrated spine, where even the flat stretches were fragmented and disjointed. She did not know it was possible to make this trek in under fifty days.
    And he would have had to be minimally equipped, with probably only a guide to show him the way, for it was definitely not possible to achieve such speed with coolies, cooks, tents, and beds.
    “How?” she asked, in sheer puzzlement. And then, more important, “Why? Why did you do it?”
    “Why did I do it?” he echoed her question, as if surprised by it.
    “Yes. Why not tell Callista to go to the Devil?”
    He chortled, a sound that contained more scorn than mirth. “Callista knows how to pick her fools, apparently.”

     
    Their paths would never have crossed again had Bryony’s stepmother not invited Leo for dinner
.
    After she graduated from medical school in Zurich, Bryony had obtained her practical and clinical training at the Royal Free Hospital and then accepted a resident post at the New Hospital for Women, both situated in London. For convenience, she lived at the Asquith town house with her father, sister, stepmother, and stepbrothers but she participated only minimally in either familial or social functions
.
    On that particular day, she’d had half a mind to take her dinner in her room. She’d worked a long shift and she was never in the mood for company even on the best of days. But they’d have been thirteen at the table, so she’d reluctantly dressed and presented herself in the drawing room
.
    And then he’d arrived and smiled at her. And she’d spent the evening in a haze, not knowing what she ate or said, aware only of him, the spark in his gray eyes when he spoke, the shape of his lips as he smiled
.
    From that day hence she lived in search of him. She
accepted invitations to anything that might include him. She went to his heavily attended lecture on Greenland at the Royal Geographical Society. She even braved many a surprised look to listen to him read a paper at the mathematical society, though beyond the first minute she understood not a thing
.
    Curiously enough, she had no aspirations at all concerning him. A drunk did not expect the bottle to love him back; and she only