The Reckless Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

being associated with me and Hassan, and while I would have considered, should you have been agreeable once you were fully informed of that risk, accepting the positions you offered in your train, it would be unconscionable of me to continue with that arrangement while you have a young lady such as Miss Michelmarsh traveling with you.”
    Loretta frowned. What was going on? Her first thought on sighting the tall, blond-haired man, clearly a military man—she could tell by his stance, the way he held his broad shoulders—was a simple, albeit dazed:
Who is he?
    Her mind had stalled at that point, her senses scrambling to fill in details, none of them pertinent to answering that question.
    How bright the golden streaks in his sandy blond hair, how unexpectedly soft his eyes of summer blue, how absurdly long his brown lashes seemed, how deliciously evocative the subtle curve of his distinctly masculine lips, how square his jaw, how imposingly tall, how strong and powerful his long body seemed to be … all those observations flashed through her mind, and none helped in the least.
    Adrift, her gaze locked on him, her senses … somewhere else, all thought had suspended, and had remained beyond her reach, until he’d spoken.
    His deep voice, its timbre, the reverberation that seemed to slide down her spine and resonate within her, shook her—enough to shock her out of her mesmerized state.
    Bad enough. But apparently Esme had invited him and his friend to act as their courier-guide and guard.
    Her immediate thought—the first rational one after her wits had returned to her—was that Carstairs and his friend were charlatans out to rob Esme … but then he’d refused the position.
    Because of her. Why?
    She listened as Esme artfully twisted Carstairs’s words, then invoked his honor as an officer and a gentleman, intenton browbeating him into acquiescing to being their courierguide, apparently all the way back to England. She could have told Carstairs that he didn’t stand a chance of wriggling out of Esme’s talons, but … the notion of having him squiring her around in the guise of their courier-guide filled her with an odd mix of anticipation and trepidation.
    If just the sight of him could make her temporarily lose her grip on her wits, what would prolonged exposure—and closer exposure at that—do?
    She couldn’t afford to be distracted, especially not now. She needed to get another vignette off to her agent tomorrow; her editor was waiting on it, holding column space for it.
    Over the past six years, writing as
A Young Lady About London,
she’d steadily developed a following with her little pieces published in the
London Enquirer,
three or four paragraphs of philosophical social commentary, a mix of observation and political satire all delivered with a highly sharpened pen. The public had taken to her writings, but her abrupt departure from England had put paid to that endeavor; she couldn’t observe London society from abroad. But then she’d had the notion to continue in similar vein with her
Window on Europe
vignettes, and her public had happily followed her through her brief sojourns in France, Spain, and Italy.
    She’d known Esme would halt at Trieste, so had warned her agent, and a letter from her editor had been waiting for her there. Apparently the publisher of the
Enquirer
was an admirer of her work, and the paper was eager to publish whatever she could send them.
    Her agent had also written informing her of the sizeable increase in remuneration the publisher was providing for each witty installment.
    She’d thought her departure with Esme would spell the end of her secret career; instead, it had brought her work more forcefully to the attention of both her publisher and the public.
    Her secret endeavor had taken a highly encouraging turn, but close acquaintance with Rafe Carstairs might well endanger that—in more ways than he imagined.
    Yet she couldn’t help but be curious over what, exactly, he