Wedding of the Season Read Online Free PDF

be of concern is his reason for coming home. My wedding is only two months away, you know.”
    Eugenia’s frown deepened in puzzlement. “What are you implying, Beatrix?”
    “I don’t know,” she confessed. “But I am curious. Why is he here? He didn’t come home when his father died, nor when my father died—” Her voice choked up, and it took her a moment to regain her voice.
    “Six years away,” she continued, “yet now, on the eve of my wedding to someone else, he comes home. Why?”
    “Maybe he wants you back,” Geoff suggested, helping himself to another seedcake. “Maybe he’s come to stop the wedding.”
    Beatrix stared at her cousin in horror. “He couldn’t,” she murmured, even as Will’s words from a short time ago about upsetting the applecart came back to her. She swallowed hard. “He wouldn’t.”
    “Ohhh,” Eugenia moaned, pressing a hand to her forehead. “This is a fine kettle of fish.”
    Geoff began to laugh. “I can see it now—all the wedding guests assembled, the journalists with pencils poised, the vicar asking if anyone knows any just cause why these two should not be joined in holy matrimony, and Will stands up—”
    “What did he tell you?” Beatrix demanded, striding over to her cousin. When he didn’t answer, she reached out and grabbed him by the ear. “Did he say that’s why he’s home? To stop my wedding? Did he?”
    “Ouch!” Geoff cried in painful protest. He gripped her wrist and pulled, trying to free himself from her tight grip. “Let go of me!”
    “Beatrix, stop that at once!” Eugenia ordered. “Twisting your cousin’s ears is most unladylike!”
    She responded by twisting harder. “Geoff, if you don’t tell me what he told you, I swear I shall—”
    “Ow, ow!” he wailed, tugging at her wrist. “He didn’t tell me anything! I’m just having you on!”
    Beatrix let go of him with a huff of exasperation and relief. “I should have known you’d rattle on without knowing any facts. Still,” she added, frowning as she returned her attention to her aunt, “in this case, Geoff might actually be right.”
    “Surely you don’t think Sunderland’s come home to make trouble?” Eugenia looked dubious. “No, I can’t believe he’d do such a thing.”
    “I can,” she responded darkly. “He implied as much to me earlier today. And it would be just like him to stand up in church and disrupt the ceremony. He’d think it quite a lark, I daresay.”
    “I still don’t believe it. Sunderland is a gentleman.”
    “Gentleman?” She stared at her aunt in disbelief. “Does a gentleman abandon his bride-to-be a fortnight before their wedding? Does he refuse to come home even after inheriting his title? Does he ignore his ducal responsibilities and duties? No, Aunt Eugenia, Sunderland is many things, but he is no gentleman!”
    “Moderate your tone, Beatrix,” her aunt said with a hint of reproof. “I am scarce half a dozen feet from you and can hear your words quite clearly. A lady of breeding does not shout, remember.”
    She had been shouting, she realized, and she took a deep, steadying breath, trying to employ reason. Surely Will hadn’t come to try to win her back. She wasn’t conceited enough to believe it, and besides, six years had gone by. And she’d been engaged to Aidan for nearly nine months. If Will wanted to win her back, he’d had plenty of time to make the attempt before now.
    Still, whatever the reason for his return, the fact remained that he was here, and she did not put it past him to cause some sort of trouble for her and Aidan while he was home. Whatever his intentions, she intended to discover them.
    “I won’t be having any tea, Auntie,” she said, and marched over to the chair where she had tossed her hat a short while earlier. “I’m going out again.”
    “Best to leave the Daimler here,” Geoff advised, glaring at her as he rubbed his sore ear. “It might be safer for Sunderland that way.”
    Beatrix