Fallen Read Free

last week had intensified until he thought he might like to destroy something—preferably with his bare hands. The worst of it was, there was no one to blame but himself.
    The wrong room, he moaned to himself for the thousandth time. The wrong bloody room. One stupid, drunken mistake, one errant turn in a darkened hallway. The shy invitation from an unhappily married woman had lured him, the spinster's ambitions had trapped him, but in the end, it was his own fault.
    Now the shackles of matrimony clanked incessantly just over his shoulder. He winced against the rising memory of his father's rage.
    "You'll marry her, by God, you'll marry her at once! You'll not ruin this family with your wickedness. I shall not have my name dragged down by a despoiler of virgins!"
    His father's voice rang through his mind again and again, making his fists clench. All his recent efforts to please the man, come to naught in one simple, disastrous mistake.
    If he gave his father and grandfather cause, they would use the sword they had wielded over his head for years; Eppie would have to marry, or risk losing it all. He cursed the bad fortune that had determined the rewriting of the entail fell to his grandfather's generation. There was no guaranteed inheritance for him, not until his grandfather signed the document of settlement.
    Worse, whom would he have to marry to obtain his inheritance? A woman he had never seen. Not by the light of day, nor any other light, for that matter. Resentment flared against this faceless woman. Whyever had she made such a claim?
    Lovers
. Her declaration had ruined her. The only reason for such had to be a desperate gamble for a husband. It was a fact of life that women wanted to marry and men did not. He grimaced. A gentleman would, of course, wed the woman whose reputation he had destroyed. It was a matter of honor, but one Blackworth would have evaded, if he could have.
    Lovers. He shook his head, running his fingers through his hair. He had only a faint recollection of climbing into the bed of the delicious Celia, who had not been Celia at all.
    His next memory was of waking with an immense lump on his head and a pounding headache made worse by his father's tirade. When at last he had escaped and pulled his friend, Viscount Stretton, aside, all his old schoolmate could relate of his soon-to-be-fiancée was that the creature was small and plain.
    "And decidedly on the shelf, old man, most decidedly," had been his friend's woeful opinion. Eric had then given him a sympathetic clout on the shoulder and the mournful goodbye of a man sending a friend off to a sure and certain doom.
    Now, Lord Blackworth closed his eyes against the cheerful scenery outside the window. His sole hope at this point was that the female was not too elderly for child-bearing, nor too ill-favored to procreate with. He shuddered thinking of the dismal future stretching out before him, so different from the exotic dreams of his youth.
    Hearing the door open and a soft voice address him, he opened his eyes and turned.
    Well. At least she was young, somewhere in her twenties. He had feared she would exceed his own thirty-four years.
    Other than that there was little to recommend her. She was quite small, almost child-size. Slender, that was something. Cautious relief began to swell within him. She was not repulsive, at any rate, although it was difficult to see past the atrocious gown enveloping her.
    Taste in fashion was apparently too much to ask.
    One could not tell much about her coloring. The faded gown's gray-green shade would make anyone look pale, and her hair was scraped back and hidden beneath an enormous, ugly cap. It gave her a bizarre overbalanced look. At least, he hoped it was the cap's fault, and not in reality a huge and unwieldy head.
    Blackworth became aware that she was studying him as well. He also became aware that they were alone in the room.
    "Where is your cousin? Or your maid?" he blurted.
    "I have no maid." She tilted