The Lady Most Willing . . . Read Online Free PDF Page A

heart-shaped face. But she had something. Her eyes, he decided. Dark as night,
     and blazingly direct. You couldn’t see what she was thinking, not with eyes so dark.
    But you could feel it.
    “Your Grace?” she murmured, and he realized he’d been staring.
    “I’m sorry,” he said automatically. “You were saying?”
    Her brows rose a fraction of an inch. “Do you mean,” she asked with careful disbelief,
     “for me to continue the story about Taran Ferguson going bare-arsed through the village?”
    “Precisely,” he clipped, since if he spoke in any other tone of voice, he might have
     to admit to himself that he was blushing.
    Which he was quite certain he did not do.
    She paused. “Well,” she said, clearing her throat, “there was a wager.”
    This he found interesting. “Do many Scottish wagers involve racing about unattired?”
    “Not at all, Your Grace.” And then, just when he thought he might have offended her,
     the corners of her lips made the slightest indentation of a smile, and she added,
     “The air is far too chilly for that.”
    He smothered a laugh.
    “I believe the wager had something to do with making the vicar’s wife faint. There
     was no requirement for nudity.” Her eyes gave a slight heavenward tilt of exasperation.
     “That was Taran’s invention entirely.”
    “Did he win?”
    “Of course not,” Miss Burns scoffed. “It would take more than his scrawny backside
     to make a Scotswoman faint.”
    “Scrawny, eh?” Bret murmured. “Then you looked?”
    “I could scarcely not . He ran down the lane whooping like a banshee.”
    For a moment he stared. She looked so lovely standing there by the fire, her thick
     hair just starting to come loose from its pins. Everything about her looked prim and
     proper and perfectly appropriate.
    Except her expression. She’d rolled her eyes, and scrunched her nose, and he thought
     she might have just snorted at him.
    Snorted. He tried to remember the last time he’d heard a gentlewoman do that in his presence. Probably the last time one had said “arse.”
    And then the laugh that had been fizzing within him finally broke free. It started
     small, with just a silent shake, and then before he knew it, he was roaring, bent
     over from the strength of it, rolling and rumbling in his belly, coming out in great,
     big, beary guffaws.
    He tried to remember the last time he’d laughed like this.
    Wiping the tears from his eyes, he looked over at Miss Burns, who, while not doubled
     over, was laughing right along with him. She was clearly trying to maintain some dignity,
     keeping her lips pressed together, but her shoulders were shaking, and finally, she
     sagged against the wall and gasped for breath.
    “Oh my,” she said, waving a hand in front of her face for no apparent reason. “Oh
     my.” She looked at him, her eyes meeting his with a direct gaze that he suspected
     was as much a part of her as her arms and legs. “I don’t even know what we’re laughing
     about,” she said with a helpless smile.
    “Nor I,” he admitted.
    The laughter fell softly away.
    “We must be hungry,” she said quietly.
    “Or cold.”
    “Insensible,” she whispered.
    He stepped toward her. He couldn’t not. “Completely.”
    And then he kissed her. Right there in front of the fire in Taran Ferguson’s sitting
     room, he did the one thing he shouldn’t do.
    He kissed her.
    W hen the duke stepped away, Catriona felt cold. Colder than when she’d been in the
     carriage. Colder than when she’d been standing in the snow. Even with the fire burning
     brightly at her back, she was cold.
    This wasn’t the cold of temperature. It was the cold of loss.
    His lips had been on hers. His arms had been around her. And then they weren’t.
    It was as simple as that.
    She looked up at him. His eyes—good heavens, they were blue. How had she not noticed
     it? They were like a loch in summer, except a loch didn’t have little flecks of midnight,
     and it