Private Arrangements Read Online Free PDF

herself what might have been. It was ten times worse with her mother there.
    Mrs. Rowland alternated between shock, despair, and an angry defiance. They'd do it again, she'd hug Gigi and whisper fiercely when she was in one of her wilder moods. Then she'd lose all hope, because they couldn't possibly repeat it—Carrington having been a rather unique case of debauchery, insolvency, and desperation.
    A brook separated Briarmeadow from Twelve Pillars. Here there were no fences, the brook being a long-recognized boundary. Gigi stood on the bank and threw pebbles into the water. The spot was pretty in summer, with pliant green willow branches that danced in the breeze. Now the defoliated willows looked rather like naked old spinsters, all thin and droopy.
    Across the brook the land rose into a slope. Suddenly, atop the slope, directly opposite her, a bareheaded rider appeared. She was taken aback. Besides her, no one ever came here. The rider, in a dark crimson riding jacket and buff riding trousers tucked into long black boots, charged down the slope. She was startled into stumbling backward, for fear the horse might gallop into her.
    At the bottom of the slope, some fifty feet downstream from her, the rider guided his mount to a muscular, graceful leap, jumping clear across the twelve-foot-wide stream. He drew up his reins, halted, and looked at her. He'd been aware of her all along.
    “You are trespassing on my land,” she shouted.
    He came toward her, nudging the huge black horse with ease, ducking under the denuded willow branches. He didn't stop until he had a clear line of sight to her, about ten feet out. And she had her first good look at him.
    He was handsome, though not as pretty as Carrington, who—poor sod, may the she-devils of hell not use him too hard—had been Byron reborn. This man here had features that were both sharper and nobler, set in a leaner, more masculine face. Their gaze met. He had beautiful, deep-set eyes, the irises a gorgeous green. A thinking man's eyes: perceptive, opaque, seeing much, giving little away.
    She couldn't look away. There was something about him that was instantly appealing to her, something in his bearing, a confidence that was unlike either Carrington's arrogant sense of prerogative or her own unyielding obduracy. Poise forged with finesse.
    “You are trespassing on my land,” she repeated, because she couldn't think of anything else to say.
    “Am I?” he said. “And you are?”
    He spoke with a subtle accent, not French, German, Italian, or anything else she could immediately think of. A foreigner?
    “Miss Rowland. Who are you?”
    “Mr. Saybrook.”
    Was he—no, not possible. But then, who else could he be? “Are you the Marquess of Tremaine?”
    Carrington had died heirless. His uncle, the next male in line, had inherited the ducal title. The new duke's eldest son took on the courtesy title of the Marquess of Tremaine.
    The young man smiled a little. “I suppose I have become that too.”
    He was Theodora von Schweppenburg's beau? She had envisioned a man as spineless and ineffectual as Miss von Schweppenburg herself.
    “You are returned from university.”
    He had not attended Carrington's funeral alongside the rest of his family because of his classes at the École Polytechnique in Paris. His parents had been vague about what he studied. Physics or economics, they'd said. How could anyone possibly confuse the two?
    “The university lets us out for Christmas.”
    He dismounted and approached her, leading the black stallion behind him. She tamped down her discomfort and remained where she was. He removed his riding glove and offered her his hand.
    “Delighted to meet you at last, Miss Rowland.”
    She shook his hand briefly. “I guess you know who I am, then.”
    The first snowflakes began to fall, tiny particles of puffy ice. One landed on his eyelash. His eyelashes, like his brows, were of a much darker shade than the molten gold at the tips of his hair. His