Read Online How to Wed a Baron by Kasey Michaels - Free Book Online

shave every day because they were men. She only had to bleed once a month.
    Oh, if only she had known! She would never have agreed to the marriage had she known. Removing herself from her aunt Mimi’s jurisdiction, her constant disapproval, had weighed heavily in her decision, as had Count Josef Eberharter’s teeth. Pleasing the king had, of course, been paramount…even if displeasing the king by refusing probably hadn’t been a serious option in any case.
    The prospect of fine gowns, of moving in English society, of having a home of her own, thesehad all finally brought her around to the notion that, if she was not the luckiest girl in the world, she at least wasn’t cleaning out fireplace grates or living in some damp cave, worrying when next she’d have something to eat.
    But this? She hadn’t known about this. The so disgusting, so crudely violating, so intensely intimate this.
    She’d made Tatiana swear on her prayer book that she was telling the truth. She’d demanded the companion then swear on that same prayer book that people actually liked it. Tatiana wasn’t sure enough to put her immortal soul in jeopardy by swearing to the latter. But she was fairly certain men liked it. Men liked the oddest things.
    The soft knock on the door to her bedchamber all but had Alina jumping out of her skin.
    â€œLady Alina? It is I, Justin Wilde. I see a spill of light under the door and feel impelled to disturb you. I believe we should have ourselves a small conversation.”
    Her wide eyes popped open even wider. It was him…God and all His saints help her…her stallion.
    â€œForgive me, my lord,” she called out, wishing her voice didn’t seem to be a full octave too high, and piteously thin. Wishing she had dared to blow out her candle and face the dark, and the disturbingimages Tatiana’s words had planted in her brain. “I am abed.”
    â€œAh, but not asleep,” came the assured voice. “One could hardly expect you to be, if your bed is half so uncomfortable as mine. Please. We really do need to talk.”
    The disturbing images disappeared as her temper came to her rescue. Was the man always going to prove such a pest?
    â€œOh, all right, if you’re otherwise going to stand out there making a fuss,” she groused mean-spiritedly, throwing back the covers and slipping to her feet. “One moment.”
    She located her dressing gown, not caring that it was old—why had she purchased so many pretty things, and completely neglected to refurbish her nightwear? She should probably add that question to the list of Things Nobody Had Told Her, praying it would not be a long list. She could only be grateful that the thing buttoned from her throat to her toes, rather like muslin armor.
    But her parents had not shared a bedchamber. It had never occurred to Alina that her husband would share hers, that he would ever see her in her nightwear. There was no avoiding the thing—she was stupidest person in creation!
    Not bothering to locate her slippers, she padded to the door, slipped back the latch and stepped back a half-dozen very large paces. “It’s open, my lord.”
    He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
    Alina crossed her arms protectively over her breasts. Just in case he became “maddened by lust,” as Tatiana had said men were prone to do at the drop of a hat.
    â€œMy, aren’t you a picture,” the baron said, bowing to her before advancing toward her, daring to lift the single thick braid that hung down over her crossed arms. “I had a mare once whose tail was so long and fine that my groom enjoyed braiding it this way. It looks better on you,” he added as he dropped the braid, so that she quickly gave her head a flip, sending the thing flying behind her back.
    â€œI’m not a mare, my lord,” Alina told him, knowing that, in many ways, she was. A broodmare…with an