Read Online I Thee Wed by Celeste Bradley - Free Book Online

her horror, Mr. Worthington seemed to take her dismissive glance as some sort of invitation. He rose to his feet.
    â€œI shall accompany you as well.”
    Francesca stared at him. “You? Now? Are you quite sure you should? Do you not have something boiling over in the laboratory?”
    Orion gazed down at Miss Penrose’s disbelieving expression, trying not to echo it with his own surprise. He didn’t remember standing. The only thing he recalled was the wave of possessiveness that had swept him when he saw Miss Penrose smile so affectionately at Langford—and when she’d spoken to him in Italian!
    The word had rolled off her tongue like cream and cinnamon and had soaked into Orion’s thoughts, bringing forcefully to mind images of golden-tinged breasts and hot rose-lipped kisses. And she had given that word to another man?
    They stared at each other for a long moment.
    Say the same to me
. Orion wanted to hear that rich, throaty language as only she could speak it.
Read the butcher’s order, recite the periodic table—anything!
    â€œIt is a fine day, isn’t it? Shall we all take a turn?”
    It was with surprise that Orion heard Miss Judith Blayne’s very appropriately modulated English voice. He had quite forgotten Judith was in the room.
    Again.
    When they all set out for a stroll through the Blayne House gardens, Orion sent one glance toward the sturdy, modern barnlike edifice of the laboratory. He felt the urge to disappear within.
    Then he heard Francesca talking to—or rather, at—Asher Langford about someone called Herbert as she steered him toward the kitchen gardens behind the laboratory.
    â€œHerbert is extraordinary, really. And so intelligent. I have never seen any other subject learn more quickly.”
    Orion’s eyes narrowed. Asher Langford was no cause for worry, but who was this Herbert fellow?
    â€œMr. Worthington, have you seen Papa’s physic garden yet?” Miss Judith Blayne stood behind him, left there in the surge of jeal—er, curiosity he’d felt about “Herbert.”
    Judith is the one you plan to marry, remember?
    She stood in the gentle light of the cloudy day, looking like a romantic painting of the textbook English beauty. Herperfection caught his eye, but her face and form did not disturb him. She seemed equally dispassionate about him, which was likely a good thing because, other than an academic knowledge of the female body and that single thwarted night at an exclusive brothel, he had no experience in pleasing a woman.
    The notion of studying passion and pleasure with Miss Judith Blayne did not repel him, but neither did it lure him.
    Judith continued to await his approach politely. “The physic garden is the culmination of fifty years’ work, collecting medicinal plants from every corner of the world,” she stated evenly, sounding rather like a brochure. “It has become quite renowned for the variety within.”
    He should be intrigued. He should be at least comfortably dutiful. It was Judith he should be trailing about the garden, fending off suitors and making himself pleasant for.
    And yet even as he stood there, he felt the relentless pull to follow Francesca’s scent, like a hunting dog barely leashed. The attraction was magnetic. He was iron to her polarity.
    Bloody hell
.
    With that silent curse, he turned his back on Francesca and Asher to accompany Judith to a different portion of the grounds.
    His biology was becoming ever more inconvenient. There must be a solution. Every problem had a solution.

Chapter 7
    F RANCESCA chafed to put an end to the morning calls, but after the walk, there was tea to be had and then more conversation. Mr. Worthington sat silent and aloof, and Francesca tried to entice more than three words sans stammer from poor Asher, but their brief companionship in the gardens had lapsed into Asher’s gazing moonstruck at Judith once more.
    At least she had