The Wedding Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

comings and goings a secret."
    "You're going away again, ' Ree ?" Poppy had fastened her arms like warm shackles around Mairey's neck, and rubbed her cheek against Mairey's . "Please, stay! Pleeease !"
    No thanks to Rushford, she'd be gone again in the morning. "I'll be away for only another day, Poppy. I promise."
    "Ducks, ducks! My baby ducks! I heard screaming!" Auntie's voice found them well before she came through the pantry, wielding the poker from her bedroom stove. "Anna, what is this? What— well. "
    The lanky woman stopped at the door and shook her head gravely, sending its white blossoms of cloth-tied curls waving.
    "Mairey Faelyn, you're as naughty as your sisters!" Tattie bent down to Mairey and stuck out her cheek to be kissed.
    "Haven't I always been?" Mairey gave her a quick peck and laughed as she got to her feet with Caro's sticky-handed help, though Poppy held on like a cat clinging to a buoy in a raging sea.
    Tattie nuzzled Mairey's cheek and then Poppy's. "Mairey didn't say she was comin' in tonight, did she, my Popper?"
    "My plans changed suddenly." Radically. Unalterably."
    "Changed how, dear?"
    Mairey hated to dodge her aunt's question. But Tattie was her mother's sister, as unaware of the Willowmoon and its secrets as anyone else in the world— except a certain dragon. The woman was as possessive as a lioness when it came to her nieces. Widowed since Waterloo , when she'd lost her handsome young groom, the woman had never had children of her own but had made up for it in the last six years.
    "I'm going to London tomorrow—"
    " London ?" Anna grabbed Mairey's hand and held it tightly. "Can we go with you, Mairey? Can we please? I want to see Kew Gardens again—the orchids."
    "The zoo! The zoo! The zoo!" Caro threw her arms around the lot of them, jumping and making monkey noises.
    Poppy's grip around Mairey's neck tightened, and the girl climbed higher in her arms. "I just want Mairey."
    "I'm sorry, loves. You can't come with me this time."
    "Next time then?" Anna laced her fingers together in girlish prayers, bouncing on her toes, nearly as tall as Mairey.
    "If it's at all possible, sweet. Don't I always keep my promises?" Especially to little girls whose hearts deserved a daily dose of wonder. She tried; oh, how she tried.
    Anna kissed her. "You're the best sister in the world, Mairey."
    "What's in London , Mairey Faelyn?" Tattie had perched her spectacles on the nub end of her nose, great lenses that turned her nondescript hazel eyes into piercing inquisitors.
    A battle to the death with a thieving dragon . "My work," Mairey said, turning to Anna to avoid Tattie's glare. "Would you light the kettle for me, Anna, please? I haven't eaten since
noon
."
    "I'll get the honey!" Caro said, dashing after her sister.
    Tattie persisted, both eyebrows arched, eyes narrowing their focus. "Going to London by yourself again?"
    "Yes."
    "For how long?" Titania Winther had an unnerving genius for knowing when something was bothering one of her nieces. And, adult or no, Mairey was included in that incisive sweep.
    "I'll he gone no more than a day," Mairey answered, her toes crossed against the possibility of a white lie.
    "And a night?"
    "Possibly." if she wasn't put in jail for murder or mayhem, or both.
    "If I didn't know you better, Mairey Faelyn, I'd swear you were skipping off to London to see a—" Tattie paused in her whispering and studied Poppy, whose nose was buried against Mairey's neck. "A man," Tattie finally mouthed.
    Mairey couldn't help a belly laugh. How simple a bit of sinful cohabitation seemed in the light of Rushford's infamy.
    "There's no man in my life, Auntie. I'm skipping off after research material." Mairey nuzzled her nose against Poppy's. "Nothing more."
    Anna and Caro were clattering dishes and whispering in the pantry. Poppy finally succumbed to the lure of conspiracy, flung herself out of Mairey's arms, and followed after them.
    "You and your father, Mairey! I don't know what drives