Two Wrongs Make a Marriage Read Online Free PDF Page B

me to help you?’ She crawled towards the edge of the bed, the silk of her nightdress billowing about her. ‘You appear to need some assistance.’
    He threw a hand dramatically in front of his eyes. ‘Do not help me, you...succubus. Do not help me ever again.’ He seized his remaining boot, hopping about a bit before managing to free himself of it and then tossing it after its mate.
    ‘I do not understand.’ She sank back on the bed, painfully sure that her last statement had been a lie.
    ‘Don’t you, now.’ He struggled out of his jacket and pulled a bundle of papers from the pocket before dropping it on the floor. ‘And you knew nothing of these, I suppose, when you decided it was urgent that you marry the first man stupid enough to be trapped by you.’ He dropped the familiar invoices on the mattress beside her.
    ‘I have no idea what you mean,’ she said, hoping that she looked sufficiently guileless.
    ‘Then I will tell you. These are a wedding gift. From your father. Your settlement. The one he promised to give to me, after we were wed.’
    ‘Oh.’ Now the storm would break for sure. And no amount of transparent silk would hold it back.
    ‘Of course, foolish man that I am, I went to him, imagining it would be something akin to a small estate, or a rather large bank draft. Instead, I find—’ he brandished the first paper ‘—the bill for the wedding breakfast. And here is another, for your wedding clothes and your mother’s as well. Tailor’s bills, grocer’s bills. Butcher’s bills, for God’s sake. And they are a month old. Am I expected to pay for chops that I have not tasted?’
    ‘Recently, there have been difficulties,’ she said. It was a huge understatement.
    ‘Difficulties?’ There was a slightly hysterical edge to her new husband’s lovely voice that took her by surprise.
    ‘Well, yes. My mother has always been prone to extravagances. But of late, a miscalculation on the part of my father has led to misfortune.’
    ‘Misfortune?’ The tone of this, if possible, was even higher than the last statement had been.
    ‘But I am sure that they are nothing that you cannot handle, as heir to Lord Stayne.’
    ‘Ahhhh.’ And this was the strangest sound of all. One-part confirmation, and two-parts wordless oath, followed by a sharp slap to his own temple and a collapse into the nearest chair. ‘I see it all now. The ease with which it was possible to catch you. Your sudden, devoted interest in me, which my own vanity made me want to believe. And damn me for a fool in that. Stayne will have my neck back in the noose as sure as your eyes are green.’
    ‘Noose?’
    ‘Where were my eyes? Where was my brain? And why, Lord, why must it be so easy for a ginger-haired girl with a magnificent bosom to trick a trickster?’
    ‘A trickster.’ He was hardly speaking to her any more. But since all he’d spoken before appeared to be lies, it was just as well. The last little speech had been so full of information that she could hardly take it all in. He was a trickster. He feared hanging and he feared Stayne.
    Apparently, he admired her eyes and certain other portions of her anatomy. It was nice, but not germane.
    ‘Why would your own father want to see your neck in a noose?’ But he’d said, back in a noose. ‘And why was it ever there in the first place?’
    Lord Kenton stared back at her with a bitter grin. ‘I have no idea what my father would want. I’ve never met the man.’ He reached for a flask in his pocket, opened it and took a healthy gulp of the contents.
    It was her turn to sit down suddenly on the nearest surface, collapsing back on the bed and hugging a pillow to her chest to conceal everything she had meant to display. ‘But that means that you’re...’
    ‘A bastard,’ he replied cheerfully and offered her the flask.
    She waved it away. ‘Then you cannot be Stayne’s heir.’
    ‘I am not even his natural son,’ Jack replied. ‘At least, I do not think I am.