Read Online Love's Promise by Cheryl Holt - Free Book Online Page B

a fool?” he mused. “Why? Because he won’t marry Rebecca?”
    “She’s lovely,” Anne declared, “and she has the appropriate ancestry.”
    She sounded like a parrot, spewing the Duke’s phrases without conscious reflection. She glanced at Phillip, to check his reaction, and it seemed as if he’d rolled his eyes in exasperation.
    “Do you imagine Michael will be happy with her?” he inquired.
    “Why wouldn’t he be?”
    Happiness had nothing to do with marriage. Michael would choose his bride for the typical reasons: money, property, and to sire an heir to continue the line.
    “Wouldn’t you like him to be happy?” Phillip pressed, and from how he was assessing her, she felt it was a trick question that had no right answer.
    “Well...yes.”
    “And you presume that Rebecca will make him happy?”
    “Don’t you?”
    “I suppose—if he wants a bride who’s just like you.”
    At voicing the remark, he appeared so accursedly innocent, but there was an undercurrent to his words that seemed to be an insult.
    It had never occurred to her that Rebecca wasn’t a suitable candidate to be Michael’s wife. She’d been John’s fiancée for years, and she was Anne’s friend, like a detached younger sister and practically part of the family, yet Phillip implied that Rebecca was all wrong for Michael. In what way? By what standard?
    Phillip changed the subject. “How did Michael’s investigation go in the country? I tried to pry the details out of him, but he was very tight-lipped. What happened?”
    “It was...difficult.”
    She didn’t like him to be so conversant with Wainwright business, so her tone was very snide—when she hadn’t intended it to be.
    “And how was it difficult, Lady Anne?”
    He only referred to her as Lady Anne, when he thought she was being ridiculous, and his overbearing manner set a spark to her temper.
    “It means just that,” she snapped. “He’s met Thomas, and the child’s situation is very dire.”
    “Surely, you can dish out more dirt than that. Or am I so unworthy that I can’t be graced with any gossip?”
    “What are you saying?”
    “You’re up on your high-horse—as usual—so you must have been listening to the Duke harangue. Let me guess: Thomas’s base blood is horribly diluted, and he’s so far beneath all of you, but you’re prepared to sacrifice on his behalf by bringing him here against his will.”
    “Against his will!” she sputtered. “He’s a Wainwright!”
    Phillip constantly sniped about lineage, and she loathed how he tried to make her feel guilty because she’d been born above him. It wasn’t her fault that his father had been a philandering roué, and Anne wouldn’t apologize for the entire social structure upon which England was founded.
    She refused to be sorry for who he was—or who she was.
    “No one said anything terrible about Thomas,” she insisted.
    “I’ll bet the Duke was a veritable fount of charity.”
    Phillip was smirking, and she’d have liked to slap his smug smile off his face.
    “He simply wants Thomas raised with us in London.”
    “The Duke isn’t the sort who’d be glad about it. Why do I sense that Thomas will suffer the trauma of being removed from his family and that he’ll never truly be welcomed by any of you?”
    “What a hideous accusation! He’s John’s son. Of course I’ll welcome him!”
    “Will you? And how about the Duke? He’s such a compassionate man.”
    Phillip viewed their affluence and position as suspect qualities, and he repeatedly attributed wicked motives to them, which made her furious.
    “If you must know, Thomas’s mother is a shrew, and they’re very poor. Michael wondered if they might even be starving. He didn’t think there was any food in the house, so Thomas can’t remain where he is. Is that adequate information to satisfy your morbid curiosity? Have I sufficiently justified myself to you?”
    “Yes, thank you,” he sarcastically replied. “So it’s