The Mad Earl's Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

and this wasn’t Rawnsley at all.
    Then he pulled off his mud-encrusted gloves and wiped the filth from his eyes with his fingers and looked at her . . . and she froze, the breath stuck in her throat as her heart missed the next scheduled beat.
    Bertie called him Cat because, he said, that’s what all the fellows at school had called him. Now Gwendolyn understood why.
    The Earl of Rawnsley’s eyes were yellow.
    Not a human brown or hazel but a feline amber gold. They were the eyes of a jungle predator, burning bright—and dangerous.
    Fortunately, Gwendolyn was not easily intimidated. The shock passed as quickly as it had come, and she knelt down beside him and offered the flask with a steady hand.
    Her voice was steady, too, as she answered. “No self-respecting witch would go away on a mere mortal’s orders. She’d be drummed out of the coven in disgrace.”
    He took the flask from her and drank, his intent yellow gaze never leaving her face.
    “You may not know that all the best witches come to Dartmoor for their familiars,” she said. “A black cat is de rigueur. Since you’re the only one available—”
    “I’m not available, and I’m not a damned tabby, you demented little hellhound! And I know who you are. You’re the curst cousin, aren’t you? Only one of Bertie’s kin would come galloping into a mire in that lunatic way and blunder about, risking a horse, as well as her own scrawny neck, saving a man from what she got him into. And I didn’t ask to be saved, Devil confound you! It’s all the same to me—I’ve already got one foot in the grave—or didn’t they tell you?”
    “Yes, they did tell me,” she answered calmly. “But I did not come all this way only to turn back at the first obstacle. I am aware it is all the same to you. I realize the mire would have saved you the trouble of putting a pistol to your head or hanging yourself or whatever you had in mind. But you may just as easily do that later, after we’re wed. I regret the inconvenience, my lord, but I cannot let you die before the ceremony, or I shall never get my hospital.”
    In the past, Gwendolyn often obtained satisfactory results from startling statements.
    It worked this time, too.
    He drew back slightly, and his furious expression softened into bewilderment.
    “It is simple enough,” she said. “I need you, and you need me—although I cannot expect you to believe that at present since you know next to nothing about me.”
    She glanced upward. “We are about to be inundated. We will need to find shelter—for the horses’ sake, I mean, since you won’t mind dying of lung fever, either. That is not altogether inconvenient. Waiting out the storm will give us a chance for private conversation.”

 
    Chapter 2
    “O H NO, YOU don’t,” Dorian said. The words came out in croaks. His throat was raw from shouting the objections she’d been so stubbornly deaf to.
    Ignoring her outstretched hand, he staggered to his feet. Staying upright proved even harder than getting up.
    Mires, it turned out, didn’t simply swallow you. His mother had failed to explain that they chewed first. They tried to suck the skin off your bones and crush your organs and muscles into jelly. Every inch of his body, inside and out, was throbbing painfully. He ignored it.
    “There will be no private tête-à-têtes,” he said, grasping her arm and marching her to the incline. “We have nothing to say to each other. I am taking you back to the house, and then you will go back where you came from.”
    “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said. Her voice remained level, and she made no effort to free herself from his grasp.
    He let go abruptly, wishing he hadn’t grabbed her slim arm in that oafish way. She had no choice but to follow him, unless she meant to take up residence in Hagsmire.
    He started up the slope alone.
    After a moment, she followed. “Why did you bolt?” she asked.
    “I took a lunatic fit.” He trudged