Read Online At Your Pleasure by Meredith Duran - Free Book Online Page A

for a woman to entertain. But was it so wrong to look for passion in a marriage? If she could feel such response to the man who had come to arrest her brother . . . good heavens. Surely she could feel something like it with some other man?
    She was resolved on it: she would tell David that Cosmo would not do.
    Hoofbeats interrupted her reverie. She walked around the house, Rivenham’s man on her heels, to discover a messenger being admitted through the front door.
    She followed him inside, then down the hall, and watched him disappear into her father’s library.
    He emerged not a minute later, and she stepped aside to give him passage, blackly amused at how he nodded to her as though she were his equal. In a minute or less, it seemed, Rivenham had managed to communicate to this stranger what little respect was owed to the Colvilles.
    The renewed anger strengthened her. She went to the library and did not bother to knock before opening the door.
    Rivenham was seated at the end of the room, behind the desk where her father had written letters and speeches and reviewed accounts, and occasionally had summoned her for a lecture—and once, on a very dreadful day, had cursed her as a jezebel and a strumpet, the ruin of her family.
    She disliked the things that stirred in her to see Adrian Ferrers lounging so easily in the chair of a man whose son he conspired to destroy. Contempt and rage should have been foremost. But the light flooding the mullioned window behind him lit the pure, pale gold of his hair and cast vivid shadows beneath the finely carved bones of his face. In his studious pose, he was beautiful as an archangel . . . or as the devil’s facsimile of the same.
    He was looking through correspondence that had just been delivered, too immersed in it to take notice of her. Instead, another man spoke from the corner.
    “Lady Towe.” Lord John Gardiner rose to his feet, making her one of those pretty, overcomplicated bows that court fops favored. “At your service, madam.”
    Lord John was as slim and neat as a whippet, elegantly turned out in green brocade and lace, his white wig freshly combed. The ladies at court thought his blue eyes beautiful, and so did he. He was no more at her service than the king of Poland.
    Still, she smiled. Her aim required a mannerly show. “Lord John,” she said. “What a pleasure to see you again.”
    His answering smile looked malicious, but that was merely his way; she could not tell if there was any particular design to it at present. “Likewise,” he said. “The court has suffered most sorely for your absence. We hardly know where to find our amusement now.”
    “Sir.” The quiet, hard word came from Rivenham.
    It had immediate effect, causing Lord John’s lips to tighten. He opened his mouth, no doubt to apologize, but she spoke quickly to forestall it. She was not in need of protection; cattish words gave her no trouble, and it was not Rivenham’s place to protect her anyway. “I am sorry to hear that,” she said to the boy. “I suppose it takes some wit to produce one’s own entertainment. Are you often bored?”
    Lord John blinked. A flush rose on his cheeks. She held his eyes even as she began to wonder at herself. In London, she had never bothered to make ripostes to tacit insults, and the boy’s evident surprise mirrored her own.
    As if that kiss in the apple grove had infected her, she felt hot and edgy, full of wild potentials. This was not London but her home, the one place where her worth was open to no man’s dispute. She would not abide insults here.
    Yet to indulge her new mood would not serve her. Of all times, it was now, with these men in her house, that she must depend on good sense for guidance. She made herself turn away from Lord John toward Rivenham—bracing herself as though to lay her eyes on the sun.
    She would not look at his lips. She would not recall how they had touched her today.
    She would recover her deportment and