The Temporary Wife/A Promise of Spring Read Online Free PDF Page B

you do not like the position, then you may leave it at any time and return home. Penny will be very happy and the children will be ecstatic.”
    “Nevertheless, it is a position to which I shall commit myself,” she said. “Why should you be the one to support us all?”
    “Because I am the man of the family,” he said.
    “Phooey!” She got to her feet, picked up his empty bowl, and refilled it without even asking if he wanted more. Philip, she thought, was going to be very angry with her. And that might be an understatement. But after tomorrow morning he would be able to do nothing about it. The loneliness of facing her own wedding quite alone washed over her for a moment, but she pushed self-pity firmly aside. What did she have to pity herself for? She was going to be a wealthy woman—a pitiable fate indeed!
    They did not stay up late. Philip was tired and his days began early. The light had gone and they always used candles sparingly. Besides, partings were always difficult. There never seemed to be anything to say during the last few hours together—perhaps because there was altogether too much to say. And this time was worse than ever because in the little they did say so many lies were necessary. He asked about the children who were to be her pupils and she was forced to invent genders and ages for them.
    She hated lying. But how could she tell the truth? There would be a time for the truth, when she was finally able to care for her family herself, when it would be far too late for any of them to exclaim in horror at the madness of what she was doing. Yes, there would be a time. But it was not now.
    She got up early in the morning, as she had done everyday since joining her brother at his lodgings in town, to get his breakfast and to pack a couple of slices of bread and some lamentably dry cheese for his midday meal—and a currant cake as a special treat. She hugged him tightly and wordlessly when he was ready to leave.
    “Take care,” he said, his arms like iron bands about her. “I hate the way you feel forced into doing this, Charity, when I am the man of the family. One day you will be free again to live the life of a lady, I promise you.”
    “I love you,” she said.
In a few hours’ time, Phil, I am going to be the wife of a very wealthy man. I am going to be a very wealthy woman. Oh, Phil, Phil
. “Tears! How silly I am.” She laughed and dashed at them with her hands.
    And he was gone. Just like that. The room was empty and cold and still half dark. It was her wedding day. She and Penny had played weddings sometimes as children—they were always joyful, lavish affairs. But this was the reality. This was her real wedding day. She blinked impatiently at more tears.
    “A RE YOU QUITE mad, Tony?” Lord Rowling asked during the weekly evening ball at Almack’s while the Marquess of Staunton languidly surveyed the female dancers through his quizzing glass. “Are you really going to go through with this insanity?”
    “Oh, absolutely,” the marquess said with a sigh. He gestured about him with one jewel-bedecked hand. “Behold the great marriage mart, Perry—Almack’s in London during the Season. All the most marketable merchandise is here on display in this very room and all the prospective buyers are looking it over. I am a buyer. Why would I not be? I am the heir to a dukedom—and the duke is reputedly ailing. I am eight-and-twenty yearsold and growing no younger. I have merely chosen to shop in a slightly different market.”
    “You
advertised
for a governess and chose a wife,” Lord Rowling said, shaking his head. “You chose a total stranger after a short interview. You know nothing about her.”
    “On the contrary,” the marquess said, his glass pausing on one particular young lady and moving slowly down her body from face to feet. “She comes highly recommended by the rector in whose parish she grew up. She was dismissed from her last post after eight months for lying, a charge