Promise Me Heaven Read Online Free PDF Page A

travel to her waist. Cat felt a quiver stir in her beneath his lazy perusal. She hastily ascribed it to the wine. She was too warm. Still, a suspicion that she had just entered unplumbed depths nagged at her. Pride alone made her hold herself still beneath his regard.
    “Mmm… perhaps,” he said. “Well, it’s as well the lambing is done and I have energy to devote to this project. We can use all the time we can get. How much is that, do you say?”
    “The season begins one month hence,” Cat bit out.
    “A month. Well, ’twill be a challenge, perhaps not impossible,” Thomas murmured. “But then, there is the question of propriety. We can hardly manufacture a scintillating little virgin only to have the gossips get hold of your unchaperoned position in my household and ruin the invention, can we? And as your great-aunt has chosen not to grace us with her presence, it is a matter we need to address.”
    Cat opened her mouth to speak, but at that moment a series of crashes and angrily raised voices shook the outer hall. The door burst open. A small figure, swathed in layer upon layer of thick, black wool, stood in the doorway. A huge, iron crucifix swung from an enshrouded throat. Green eyes, of amazing beauty and fierceness, impaled them from a perspiring, wrinkled visage. The tiny figure raised an ebony cane with one hand and with the other produced what appeared to be a well-worn Bible. She held both aloft as though warding off some demon. Into the silence, her voice issued forth with sepulcher condemnation. “Evil!”
    Cat turned to Thomas. “Allow me to introduce my great-aunt, the dowager duchess Montaigne White. But I believe you know her better as ‘Hundreds Hecuba.’ ”

Chapter 4
     

    D amn and blast the chit,” Thomas muttered. He swung his long legs over the side of his bed, stifling a groan as his overworked muscles protested. He wondered darkly where
she
was now. Sprung, no doubt, fully clad and alert from the depths of youthful slumber. She probably did handsprings down the hall on her way to breakfast. After, of course, stopping for an edifying spiritual consultation with Hecuba Montaigne White.
    Thinking of Hecuba, Thomas shuddered. Thus are the mighty tumbled—or rather, thus are they not tumbled—becoming a convert in the grip of religious mania. He only hoped that if in his dotage he should start collecting saints’ knuckle bones, someone would do him the kindness of placing a bullet ’twixt his eyes.
    Luckily, he assured himself, his dotage was some years hence. In spite of what Catherine Sinclair thought. He had never been more fit. But while he may well be fit, there was no denying the silver streaking the hair at his temples, or the stiffness that was, even now, greeting his first moments of wakefulness. It made no difference that yesterday he had labored harder than most stalwart farmhands. At least five years ago it would have made no difference. The chit had merely pointed out a few unassailable facts, the foremost being he was no longer a youth. What a confoundedly rude thing to do!
    Ever since selling his commission after the battle at Salamanca and returning to England, Thomas had flirted with depression. He had forced himself to become involved in the workings of his farm and while it had proved something of a tonic, it had not completely dispelled his sense that he lacked purpose.
    This morning, however, the apathy he had tried so hard to combat had evaporated. This morning he wanted a spot of revenge.
    He had spent hours last night wondering what to do with his unexpected, and unwanted, houseguest. This morning, images of her flitting about at the crack of dawn, concocting some syrupy tisane for her aged host, decided him. He would take her up on her outlandish proposal. He would turn the little shrike into a midnight swan, instruct her in the ways of a rogue, tutor her in the language of dandies, make her familiar with the ways of rakes and libertines. Begad, he’d win