Read Online Edith Layton by To Tempt a Bride - Free Book Online Page B

wore one of Belle’s old frocks made over until it looked like new. The cast-off gown showed off Nell’s figure and its pink color gave her face a lovely glow. Her hair was done simply under the bonnet Camille had discarded, the one with feathers. Now Camille wished she’d never given it up. She also wished Eric would release Nell’s hand. Just looking at that big, strong tanned hand swallowing up Nell’s was like watching the two of them making love, she thought, suddenly stricken as well as sickened by the thought.
    “I am well, thanks to you,” Nell said softly, gazing into his eyes and then shuttering her own with her long dark lashes.
    Thanks to me too! Camille silently shouted. Unworthy, she chided herself. Fool for harboring her , another, more practical voice in her head said scornfully, and folly to have brought her here. But if he’s never meant for me, I have to know it, she argued. That doesn’t mean you have to give him your rival, she answered herself.
    But she couldn’t be that petty. After all, if she and Eric had a future outside her dreams, she didn’t want to look back one day and wonder what would have happened if she hadn’t turned away the girl he rescued. Would she always wonder if he’d have preferred Nell? She had to know. Well, now you do, she thought in despair.
    “Cammie?” Eric said again, because she hadn’t taken the chair he’d just offered her. “Aren’t you going to sit? Beg pardon, miss. Are you there? I thought I was the one who got knocked in the head.”
    “As to that,” she said quickly, recovering herself, “how’s your poor head?” She was so eager to know that she kept her eyes on his face and found a place to sit only by putting her hand on the seat of the chair behind her and following it down without looking, only belatedly aware that a lady was supposed to settle into her chair like a butterfly on a rose petal.
    Eric didn’t seem to notice. He smiled at her. “My head?” he said as he sank to his chair again. “It’shard enough on the outside. It was the fever that leveled me, not the villain. I’m better now. In fact, I’d have been out riding with you already if it weren’t for Rafe’s setting a watch on me. He let me come home, but he’s in league with my valet. One misstep, and Brenna would know it and lecture me to death. I’d rather die of fever. Which I won’t!” he said hastily, when he saw her expression. “In fact, the evidence is mounting. It seems that though I keep getting these attacks, I’m also getting better every day I stay here in England. So how was your ride this morning?”
    “Fine,” Camille said, and then, greatly daring for someone who tried to never let him see how much he meant to her, she added, “but dam—deucedly lonely.”
    “Terribly,” Belle corrected her in a weary whisper, “or mightily.”
    “Aye. Mightily lonely,” Camille agreed with a vigorous nod.
    Eric grinned. “But why?”
    “Well, you know Belle doesn’t care to ride,” Camille said.
    “What about your guest?” he asked. “Don’t you care to ride, Miss…Baynes, is it? We really were never properly introduced.”
    “There was hardly time,” Nell said with a tilted smile. “No, I never learned to ride, Lieutenant Ford. I lived in the country, but in a little town, not on a farm.”
    “No, not ‘lieutenant’ if you please. I’m done with the army now, or at least it’s done with me,” Eric said ruefully. “The war’s done, and my fever put paid to that career. So a mere ‘mister’ will do.”
    “There’s nothing mere about you,” Camille said staunchly.
    Belle stopped herself before she actually rolled her eyes, and suppressed a small sigh of frustration. She’d seen spaniels keep their adoration for their master more of a secret.
    “Yes,” Eric said, deliberately misunderstanding her, “I am much too big for a mere anything.”
    “And your house!” Camille said in awe, looking around. “It’s just—well,