The Rebel Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

March.”
    He instinctively disliked her snide tone. His hackles rose a bit, but he drew on the sangfroid for which he was renowned. He raised his brows and gave her a mocking bow. “Why, yes, I do have that honor.”
    It was a well-delivered snub, but Julien quickly realized that Katharine Brandon didn’t recognize that she’d just been slighted, or should have been, by a renowned gentleman. Her head remained cocked pertly to one side as she said, “Yes, I suppose it could be regarded as an honor to some. Perhaps to a few who wouldn’t know any better.”
    A silver glint came to his gray eyes. So she wanted to cross verbal swords with him, did she. He said swiftly, enjoying himself suddenly, “It is a particular honor to ladies of breeding.”
    He maliciously eyed those very tight-fitting breeches of hers. He expected her to blush to the roots of her hair at the very least, perhaps even to stammer incoherently until he would graciously excuse her, for he had many times achieved this result with but the mildest of set-downs.
    He didn’t receive even the very least, for she said in a revoltingly cheerful voice, all the while brushing leaves from her breeches, “I suppose it is difficult to evince breeding when one is engaged in a duel.” She raised those green eyes to Julien’s face and added as brazenly as a hussy in Soho, “But you must admit, dear sir, that breeches are much more the thing when one must falldown and play dead. Imagine what a gown would do. Why, petticoats would be spilling all over the place. You would be quite horrified, being so very proper and so dreadfully well bred.”
    Before Julien could come up with words, rather than just boxing her ears as his hands itched to do, she added, seeming to ponder the problem, “Perhaps it is a sad trial to gentlemen of your breeding and, er, advanced age, and nobleness, to accept with any degree of composure such trifles as ladies dueling.”
    For the first time in his life, Julien Edward Mowbray St. Clair, earl of March, found himself with a tongue dead in his mouth.
    “Kate, really,” her brother said, grabbing her shoulders and giving her a good shake, but not nearly a hard enough shake, Julien thought. “Sir, she’s overzealous in her insults. She usually is, however. She truly doesn’t mean half of what she says, particularly if she’s intent on besting anyone, which she is more times than not. She cuts me up with her tongue better than the cook wields her knife.”
    “Overzealous. What a thing to say, Harry. I see it all clearly now. Just because he’s a man and an earl, you’re ready to spring to his side and leave me here alone in a ditch.”
    Julien looked back and forth between the pair and felt a muscle twitch at the corner of his mouth. Although he found the manners of this hoydenish girl deplorable, the situation was ridiculous in the extreme, and he could not help breaking into a grin.
    “Miss Brandon,” he said gravely, gazing into her upturned face, “please accept my profound apologies. You look most charming in breeches, though I confess that seeing swirling petticoats would doubtless be an equal treat.”
    She shot him a look of pure mischief and said in a demure voice, “But, sir, I could not look more charming in breeches than you do.’ ”
    Julien would have liked to take his hand to her breeched buttocks, but realizing in all truth that thispleasure must be denied him, he threw up his hands and gave up the battle. He forgot about an earl’s consequence, threw back his head, and gave way to a shout of laughter. “Where, Miss Brandon, have you and your brother been hiding yourselves? I count it my misfortune not to have met the pair of you before.”
    Harry replied quickly to prevent any further impertinence from his unpredictable sister, “It’s not so strange, my lord. You are not often here.”
    “As I said, an absent landlord,” she said, and robbed the words of insult by grinning impudently up at him.
    Julien