Read Online Trial by Desire by Courtney Milan - Free Book Online Page A

complex embroidery. She was a figure to be trussed up in a corset and petticoats, to be protected when necessary and indulged when not. A lady did not get her hands dirty. Kate had learned that all too well from her parents.
    She wondered what Ned would say if she told him she’d arranged Louisa’s escape. If he would even believe her capable of that much, or if he imagined that she was as frivolous—as superfluous —as Harcroft had said.
    She could hear the animal’s breath behind her. She had never realized that a solitary horse could breathe so loudly.
    “Why isn’t he going?” She pitched her voice low, but even she could hear the desperation in her words.
    Ned did not move his eyes from her. “I don’t know. I think he can smell the peppermints in my pocket. Here.”
    He moved his hand slowly, slowly to his waistcoat pocket; then, just as agonizingly slowly, he pulled it away. His hand was close enough to brush her cheek.
    He tossed another candy, throwing it far off into the grass.
    She could not see the horse. She heard only its breathing. No tentative footfalls signaling its departure. Nothing.She could imagine Champion, warily scenting the wind, considering whether to put its back to its enemies.
    Ned winked at Kate, and her toes curled.
    “I don’t dare move,” she confessed.
    “Really?” He gave her a naughty smile. “I can think of a dozen ways in which I might use that to my benefit.”
    Kate swallowed. If she’d been reluctant to move before, his words rooted her in place now. Her half boots seemed to be made of thick iron. Her arms were bound at her side. Her mind filled with all the wicked things he might do to her. He might kiss her. He might run his hand down her side. He might undo those mother-of-pearl buttons at her neck and peel back the lace at her bodice.
    He looked in her eyes. That old, heady desire swirled through her. A breeze eddied between their bodies, and she felt its caress as if it were his. His eyes narrowed, oh so subtly. He leaned forward.
    Maybe this was why she had come here, danger or no danger, plan or no plan. She needed to assure herself that on some basic, primeval level, Edward Carhart still thought of her as his wife. To see if he would treat her as carefully, as gentlemanly, as before.
    Champion moved away. Kate felt an elusive brush of wind against the nape of her neck, a wisp of air turning to nothing. Then, the clop of hooves.
    “There,” Ned said. He had not dropped his gaze. Her lips tingled; her skin seemed too tight. He was going to kiss her. And foolishly, after three years of absence, she still wanted him to try. She wanted to believe he would attempt to revitalize their phantom marriage. She wanted to put her hands on the rough, wet fabric of his shirt, tofeel the skin beneath. She wanted a taste of his carefree casualness, some indication that he thought of her as more than a delicate duke’s daughter. She wanted to believe he felt something for her, even if it was an emotion as evanescent and fleeting as desire. She bit her lip in an agony, waiting for him to move forward.
    Instead he pulled away. “There,” he declared again. “Now you’re free to leave.”
    Leave. She could leave? She stared at his profile in disbelief. After he’d practically pinned her to a fence post and joked he could use her twelve ways—after all that, he thought she could leave before he tried even one of them?
    She bit her lip, hard. She could taste copper salt on her tongue. She could finally breathe now—and her breath seemed heated to fury.
    “I can leave? ”
    He didn’t look back at her. His hands were balled at his sides.
    “I can leave? And here I thought that was what you were best at.”
    He flinched and looked back at her. “I was trying to be a gentleman.”
    “I think,” Kate said, “you are the most obtuse man in all of Christendom.”
    “Possible, but unlikely.” He gave her an apologetic shrug. “There are a great many Christians, and a good