A Scandalous Marriage Read Free

never forgotten her or those precious, magic moments …
    Now here she stood in the middle of nowhere, slopping pigs, and looking more lovely than he had remembered her. For a moment, all he could do was gape, drinking in the sight of her like a thirsty man reaching for water.
    And then he realized that she’d changed.
    She was pregnant. Very, very pregnant.
    The jolt of jealousy was staggering. A cold numbness spread through his body.

    Her lips silently formed his name.
    He’d kissed those lips.
    Surprisingly, he found his voice first. “Miss Carrollton,” he said tersely, frigid air rising around him with the words. It took all his strength to speak.
    She didn’t answer. She seemed horror-struck by his presence.
    Good.
    “I’m certain my appearance here has caught you by surprise,” he continued stiffly. “My horse needs a shoe. Point me in the direction of the nearest farrier and I’ll be on my way.” He was proud that his voice was steady. He could have been talking to a stranger rather than the woman he loved. No, whom he had once loved, he amended.
    She still didn’t answer. Her stare was unnerving. It irritated him. What did she fear? That he would go rabid with jealousy? Bay at the moon? Or wear his heart on his sleeve?
    Oh, no, he had too much pride for that.
    “Come, Miss Carrollton,” he said, infusing all his anger and scorn into the syllables of her name.
    “Certainly you know who I am. Lord Huxhold? Or has pregnancy addled your brains?”
    He immediately regretted the words, but he couldn’t call them back.
    Bright spots of color appeared on her cheeks. And then she hurled the slop bucket at him with surprising force.
    Devon ducked just in time, knocking the empty bucket away with his arm.
    Miss Carrollton didn’t wait to apologize but lifted her skirts and attempted to run from him.
    Devon watched her. Her run was more a lumbering trot. She didn’t go toward the house but headed for the woods. She looked almost comical, her petite figure practically swallowed whole by the baby she carried.
    Another man’s baby.
    He should let her go.
    After all, he had his horse to see to and his grandfather’s summons. He told himself all this even as he took the first step around the fence in her direction. By the time he’d traveled the length of it, she’d almost disappeared past the tangle of still green holly and winter-bare shrubbery. He caught a flash of her red shawl. Where the devil did she think she was going? To her husband?
    “Miss Carrollton, wait!”
    As he expected, she didn’t slow her step. Leah had always been stubborn. Stubborn and willful and proud. But she would have an accident charging off the way she was willy-nilly. Then it would be on his conscience. Or so he told himself as, with a heavy sigh, he set out after her. He was a knave, a jealous fool. If her husband had any sense, he’d call him out.
    Worse, Devon would welcome the opportunity to run the man through. He hated him without even meeting him.
    Leah ran as if the very hounds of hell nipped at her heels—or as well as a woman nine months with child could run. Her shawl fell down around her shoulders. The gathering wind of the threatening storm blew her hat off her head. It bounced on her back, held by the frayed ribbons tied in a knot around her neck.
    Meeting Devon Marshall was her deepest fear come to life.
    She’d been dreaming a lot lately, vivid, disturbing dreams that the village women assured her were common to all pregnant women. But it wasn’t until she saw him standing there that she realized he’d been the dark, menacing figure in those dreams.
    In that moment of recognition, she’d been transported to another time, another place. She’d been at Lady Trudgill’s ball, and a man more handsome than sin had swept her off onto a dance floor. A man who had commanded her with his presence and with something more, something she couldn’t explain and had not felt since. Not even with David Draycutt.
    She