To Catch A Duke Read Online Free PDF

  She wished for Benjamin.  
    She wished that one day, he might
realize that she would make a good wife to him.   She didn't require love or any of the other emotions the silly
young chits on the marriage mart bandied about.   She wouldn't even require he spend time with her.   She would allow him to live his own life,
separate from her, just so long as she had a place to call home, somewhere she
belonged.   In return, he would be a
husband to her, and, hopefully, she could give him children, an heir to carry
on the Radcliffe line.  
    But she would never, ever ask for
love.   In her deepest of hearts she
might want it with a ferocity that scared her, but she would never ask for it,
never wish for it.   Wishing for Benjamin
to some day share his life with her was enough of a risk for her heart,
something that, logically, she knew she would never have.   Still, it was a tiny bit of hope, the shadow
of a dream, and on very lonely nights like tonight, it was a small
comfort.   It was the only dream she
allowed herself.   Love was not part of
the equation.   It never could be.
    Julia didn't know when she'd begun
to cry, only that as she focused on her reflection once more, she could see the
tears flowing feely down her cheeks.   Letitia and Henrietta's words that evening had hurt her far worse than
she'd initially thought.   Not that she
would ever allow anyone to see that pain, either.
    Then Julia did something she hadn't
done in a very long time.   She pulled
away the top of her nightrail and exposed her breasts and chest.   Here was the answer to the bet in that
dratted book at White's, the one that only Nicholas and Benjamin knew the truth
about.   Not even Meggy knew for certain,
for Julia never allowed her maid to see her completely unclothed.   No one had, at least not since she'd been
very, very young.
    Everyone assumed that the two scars
that snaked under her jaw and down her throat ended just at the top of her
chest, a fraction of an inch below the bodice of her gowns.   They didn't.   Instead, they fanned out, six tiny, shallow lines radiating from
the longer, deeper center line that ended just above her nipples, much like the
pattern of a fan.   Two more, one on each
side of her body, snaked down her sides, from her breasts to her waist.   Those weren't deep, and the one on her left
side not as smooth as the others, more jagged where it ended abruptly halfway
down her body.    Like the scars on her
face, Julia had no idea how they'd come to be there.
    Her mother and father had, of
course, known about the scars, as had her old nurse, but now, only Nicholas and
Benjamin knew the truth.   Since they'd
grown up together, shared the same sickroom at times, it was difficult for them
not to know.   When she'd been six and
they twelve after a particularly nasty bout of the flu that had left them all
nearly naked and ill together in the nursery at Seldon Park, they'd made a pact
never to speak about the scars to anyone.   They'd even sealed the pact with blood, Nicholas making small slits on
each of their thumbs with the hunting knife he'd received for Christmas the
previous year.
    As far as she knew, neither one of
them had ever broken that pact.   They'd
almost had to when, shortly after her father had died, she'd developed a chest
cold that normal remedies could not soothe, but in the end, it hadn't been
necessary.   Now, on occasion, Nicholas
asked if she was well and would gaze in the area of the scars.   She would nod and say that she was fine, and
that would be the end of things.
    But they were still there, just
below the surface that society saw, and in her heart, Julia knew that no man,
no matter how kind and patient, would ever be able to look beyond those
perfectly straight lines to the woman beneath.
    She was still contemplating the
scars when a knock sounded at her door.  
    "Just a minute!" she
called and hurried to pull her nightrail on, as well as pull on her dressing
gown.   She