What the Groom Wants Read Online Free PDF Page B

smile. “You kiss me like that and then ask me why?” He touched her jaw, another fiery caress across her skin. “Wind, I have thought about you often over the years.”
    She looked at him, trying to understand. She had thought of him relatively little, except as a half-forgotten wish. Her life was too full, too busy to spend time on what might have been. But on a ship, she supposed there were long hours of doing nothing but staring at water. Of course he would reminisce about the days of his youth.
    When she didn’t answer, a flash of worry crossed his face. “Wind? May I?”
    So compelling was his gaze that she nodded before she thought deeply about it. The hows and the whys were impossible. “I will be working.” She was not someone who sat around waiting for afternoon callers.
    “We could walk through the park.”
    She bit her lip. She did love to walk through Hyde Park at the fashionable hour. She wore something gray and ugly, then sat on a bench watching as fashionable ladies paraded by wearing the dresses she’d sewn.
    “I would like that,” she said, a smile curving her lips. She could show him her creations on a countess or a baroness. Would he like them? Would he be proud of her? She had no need for his approval, but she’d like it nonetheless.
    He grinned. “I’ll come here tomorrow afternoon to take you to the park. We’ll sit and watch the peacocks strut by.”
    She nodded, feeling awkward and excited all at once. It had been years since she felt this giddy uncertainty, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. But she was powerless to stop the simmering heat that built in her chest and slowly climbed to her cheeks.
    Then she heard a noise from the workroom. Someone was coming to the back door. “I need to go,” she said.
    “Of course.” Then he took her hand and kissed it, bowing as he did, as if he were greeting a duchess. It made the sizzle in her blood pop faster and hotter. “Until tomorrow then, Wind.”
    “Good day, Mr. Lyncott,” she said as her apprentice Tabitha pulled open the back door with an armful of trash. Wendy gave a sharp look to the girl, but said nothing as she walked inside. Her thoughts were on Radley Lyncott the rest of her day.
    It made her stitches uneven at times, her work slower than usual, but she couldn’t make herself stop—the prince of the neighborhood coming to call on her. But of course, she was a successful shop owner now, she reminded herself. Not a dirty girl running wild in the London streets. She was a proper woman, and it was not so far a stretch to think of such a man.
    Or at least it wasn’t until that evening, when she was an hour into dealing vingt-et-un. She had a full table, as usual. The men liked her because she smiled. They called her the Green Lady of Mystery because of her green eyes. It had become a game to discover her name or get her to say something tart. Her witty tongue brought them to her table, and she had to admit she enjoyed the freedom to say something cutting. And the sharper her wit, the higher her tips, so she worked at being clever.
    She also worked hard at listening. Half the value of the gaming hell to Damon was not in the money, but in the information. Deep play and a steady flow of alcohol loosened many a tongue, and the Demon paid his dealers well for juicy gossip. And since she cared not who was having an affair with whom, or which lord was embezzling from what fund, she had no difficulty telling such things to Damon if he took money off her brother’s debt.
    Until tonight.
    Tonight’s topic was about a lowly sailor now become a duke. The story was simple. The man was descended from a disgraced third son of the Duke of Bucklynde. The rift had occurred three generations back, but the old man had never disowned the son, although he made well known his disapproval of the boy’s choice of wife. Everyone in the current generation was waiting until the crotchety nob died to reunite with the disgraced branch.
    Then disaster