Read Online Cloudy With a Chance of Marriage by Kieran Kramer - Free Book Online Page A

Jilly’s. “The Horn, Sir Ned, the Horn,” he called back to the man.
    Looking rather smug, Miss Jones stood waiting for his answer.
    “Under duress,” he murmured, “I accept your offer. But I have a requirement of my own.”
    “And that is?” She was toying with him. And toying with him was damned near close to flirting, even if she didn’t recognize that fact.
    “If you want my assistance,” he said, “—and you must, for judging from your expression, the prospect of subjugating me to your whims absolutely delights you—you can’t tell the neighbors my pursuit of you is contrived.”
    She looked up at the ceiling then back at him. “Very well. I agree. Except for Otis. I tell him everything.”
    “Agreed.”
    They shook hands quickly, at the precise moment the door to the shop was thrown open.
    Stephen dreaded turning around. What if it were the crying Miranda? Or her moaning mother?
    Thank God it was only Lady Duchamp. “Captain Arrow, the top-heavy matron on your front doorstep is spitting nonsense,” she drawled, “something about your being here to pursue Miss Jones. I shall feel compelled to box her husband’s gigantic ears if she’s told me a lie.”
    Stephen drew himself up. “It’s no one’s business but mine and Miss Jones’s, my lady.”
    Lady Duchamp looked at Miss Jones. “Has he proposed marriage?”
    “No.” Miss Jones’s mouth was a bit white.
    “Well?” Lady Duchamp stared accusingly at Stephen. “Whyever not, if you’re pursuing her? Do you have reservations, young man, about commitment?”
    “As I said, my lady, it’s—”
    “Hellooo? Is she in here?” Lady Hartley thankfully interrupted, her voice calling like a foghorn from outside. “Miss Jooones!”
    Miss Hartley, her hands clamped to her ears, peered over her mother’s shoulder into the shop. “Oh, ith lovely!” she exclaimed.
    Lady Duchamp curled her lip at the new arrivals. “I don’t consort with mushrooms,” she said. “I’m leaving.”
    Miss Hartley blanched as Lady Duchamp made her way past her by nudging her in the stomach with the tiny porcelain woman at the top of her frightening walking stick.
    But Lady Hartley batted the cane away. “Get that thing away from me!”
    “Watch yourself!” Lady Duchamp warned her.
    For a few seconds, a small struggle at the top of the stairs between both titled ladies took Stephen’s attention away from Miss Jones’s delicate profile, which he’d been admiring while she wasn’t looking.
    But the old harridan and her swinging cane were soon out of the way, and Lady Hartley and Miss Hartley finally entered the shop. Miss Hartley smiled sweetly at Miss Jones, but her mother eyed Miss Jones’s modest pink gown and appeared to find it wanting.
    “It’s come to my attention you’re the object of Captain Arrow’s pursuit,” Lady Hartley said. “Are you?”
    Miss Jones deigned to smile at her. “I don’t know. Am I?”
    “Impertinent girl!” The matron reddened, but then her gaze turned hopeful. “You mean you’re not the captain’s intended?”
    Miss Hartley bit her lip and appeared most interested in the answer, as well.
    Bedazzled virgins often were.
    Miss Jones looked at him with a twinkle in her eye—a most unexpected twinkle—and shrugged. “Captain Arrow has never declared himself,” she said in a breezy manner.
    Lady Hartley turned to Stephen. “Well?”
    “A man likes to choose his own opportunities,” he said grimly. “ Not be pushed about by interfering women.”
    “All I know,” said Miss Jones to the ladies with a confidential air, “is that he follows me about like a lovesick puppy.” She giggled. “He’s quite adorable, if you like that sort of thing.”
    Lovesick puppy?
    Adorable?
    Stephen narrowed his eyes. Miss Jones had adjusted rather well to their so-called impossible and unwelcome circumstances, hadn’t she?
    Miss Hartley giggled. Lady Hartley looked at him suspiciously.
    Which wouldn’t do at all. The two women