Read Online Scotsmen Prefer Blondes by Sara Ramsey - Free Book Online Page B

brother stifle a laugh, but she was done with him for the night. “I didn’t mean for this to happen, Prue. Carnach kissed me, not the other way around.”
    Prudence raised an eyebrow.
    “It’s true,” Amelia insisted. She was starting to panic, but she tried to keep the tremor out of her voice. “You’re welcome to him, if you still want him.”
    Malcolm glared at her, but Prudence shrugged. “No, Alex is right. I need a man whose intellect is keen enough to recognize the woman in front of him for what she is. None of the men in my acquaintance qualify.”
    She had, with one statement, comprehensively insulted them all. Amelia would have applauded, if only because Prudence had finally found her voice, but Prudence had already turned toward the door.
    Alex frowned as Amelia rose to chase after her. “Are you sure you should follow her, Amelia? She doesn’t seem like herself.”
    Amelia snorted. “She’s right. You don’t know her at all. If I can’t apologize now...”
    She trailed off and dashed after Prudence. Prudence was the slowest to anger of all of them. But once her temper ignited, it burned everyone in its path. When the flames died, her heart would be so hardened that Amelia would never be admitted again.
    Prudence was walking fast, nearly running, but Amelia’s longer stride caught her. She grabbed Prudence’s arm just as they reached the great hall. “Prue, I’m unbelievably sorry.”
    Prudence whirled around, wrenching her arm out of Amelia’s grasp. “Not here, you ninnyhammer,” she hissed.
    There was no one about, but the great hall was so cast in shadows that a dozen footmen could have hidden in the alcoves between the high, mullioned windows that lined the longest wall. The giant double doors were barred and locked, their iron fittings ominous in the moonlight. Amelia shivered. The ancient room bore down upon her, chilling her heart.
    In five hundred years, how many forced marriages had happened here?
    Probably more than she wanted to know of. But she wouldn’t let herself be the next one. And she certainly wouldn’t lose Prudence’s friendship over it.
    “Fine,” Amelia whispered. “Your room or mine?”
    Prudence didn’t answer. Amelia followed her across the great hall and up the stairs to the guest wing. But when she tried to follow Prudence into her room, Prudence blocked her.
    “I have nothing to say to you. You have nothing I wish to hear.”
    Amelia crossed her arms. “If you don’t let me in, I’ll start discussing this so loudly that we’re both ruined,” she threatened. “As there’s only one earl downstairs to marry, we shouldn’t risk it.”
    “There are two earls downstairs, if you count your brother,” Prudence said mulishly. But she stepped away from the door and let Amelia in before her.
    “If you want Alex, you should have him — although why you would marry such a prig, I’ve no idea,” Amelia said, standing awkwardly in the center of the room as Prudence removed the pins that held her hair in place. “This is the second time in less than six months that he’s forced a woman under his care into marriage.”
    “Madeleine wanted to marry Ferguson, if I recall,” Prudence said, dropping pins one by one into a little ceramic dish on top of her dressing table. “From what I saw in the library, you and Carnach will rub along together quite tolerably. ‘Rub’ being the appropriate word, of course.”
    For a moment, when Prudence grinned at her own jest, it was just as it always was between them. But then Prudence remembered what Amelia had done, and the smile disappeared.
    Amelia twisted her fingers. Her cracking knuckles were like icicles breaking off in the silence. “I didn’t go to the library to kiss him, you know. I planned to throw the two of you together so you might discover some sort of attraction.”
    Her friend ignored the excuse. The last pins came away, and Prudence’s hair fell to her back. It was waist length and wavy, and the