A Marriage of Inconvenience Read Free Page A

myself the trouble and simply marry one of the neighbors, or else write to Alec and Andrew to see if they can commend any of their brother officers to my affections.”
    James laughed. “So long as you marry wisely, but with affection, too. You’re not the sort who’d be content in some cold match of convenience.”
    “Is anyone? ”
    “I haven’t heard that our neighbor at the castle is making a love match. I’d imagine Lord Almont will be content so long as this Portia Arrington gives him an heir at last.”
    Anna shook her head. “That’s not how it is at all, brother, as you would know if you hadn’t been so determined to avoid all society these past few months.”
    “I had my reasons.” By shunning balls, parties and rides in the park at the fashionable hour, he had managed to avoid seeing Eleanor.
    “You don’t mean to tell me what they were, do you?”
    “Of course not. So you may as well tell me what’s so terrible about Lord Almont’s match.”
    She sighed. “Only that it’s quite clearly a love match on his side, but not on hers, which seems to me a sure recipe for conjugal misery. I can imagine a marriage both parties enter for convenience being happy, so long as each fulfills their end of the bargain, but love on one side, calculation on the other? Surely that must become unbearable for both.”
    “So he loves his young bride? I assumed he was marrying again only to secure the succession.”
    “I’m sure that’s why he first sought a wife. But Miss Arrington is very beautiful, and Lord Almont was besotted from the moment he set eyes upon her.”
    “Why couldn’t such a beauty find a husband more to her liking, or at least nearer her age?” James had known many happy marriages where the husband was older than the wife. Father had been fourteen years older than Mother. James himself thought it perfectly acceptable for a wife to be older than her husband. He had not cared that Eleanor was a dozen years older than he was. But Lord Almont was over thirty years older than Miss Arrington, and James thought that gap a trifle excessive.
    Anna shrugged. “We moved in different circles, so I couldn’t say. Perhaps her family insisted upon the match for the sake of his wealth and rank. I pity her, if so.”
    They reached the stables where grooms waited with a pair of Arab mares, one a silvery dappled gray, the other a dark bay. James mounted his gray, Ghost, and waited while a groom boosted Anna into Shade’s saddle.
    Together they rode out of the stable yard at a sedate trot. When they reached a long, open field, empty except for a handful of placidly grazing sheep, James grinned at his sister. “Shall we have a gallop?”
    “Absolutely.”
    And they were off, racing together across the green fields under a clear blue sky.
     
     
    On her first morning at Almont Castle, Lucy awoke early and decided to go for a walk before anyone else from the families—her own or Lord Almont’s—was about. Her peaceful, well-ordered life had been thrown into utter disarray over the past fortnight, and she craved solitude to reflect upon the changes and how she was expected to behave in light of them.
    She still found it difficult to believe she was truly engaged to Sebastian, the more so because his mother, her Aunt Arrington, had ordered them to keep the betrothal secret for the time being, until Sebastian’s sister Portia’s wedding was over. She had made it a condition of her consent to the match, and Sebastian had grudgingly acquiesced.
    Lucy hadn’t asked for an explanation because she knew what her aunt must be thinking—that Portia might grow unmanageable if anyone stole attention she thought her due. Or perhaps Aunt Arrington herself didn’t want Portia’s grand new family to know just yet that a lowborn girl like Lucy would soon be not just Portia’s cousin, but her sister-in-law.
    Lucy could not like being obliged to keep her own prospects a secret for Portia’s sake, but she obeyed her