Heartless Read Free Page B

Derringer,” she suggested, her mild tone having the opposite effect.
    He pulled back on the reins, bringing the horses to a standstill. They had yet to leave the innyard and he saw they were drawing a crowd of curious onlookers. He didn’t care.
    “And what good, wife , will calm do me, hmm?” he inquired silkily. “I have not the least reason to restrain my temper and no Friday-faced shrew of a wife is going to convince me otherwise!”
    Leandra stared at her husband with rising indignation and dismay. He really was as devilish as his black garb suggested. This was not a very promising start for their married life.
    “You are behaving like a child, your grace,” she retorted with the same unruffled calm she’d endeavored to display every moment since she had met him.
    The duke’s mouth dropped open. He made as if to say something, snapped his mouth shut, and gave the horses the office to start moving. The first ten minutes of their journey was accomplished in silence. Leandra used the time to study her husband with unabashed curiosity.
    His facial features were really too harsh for actual handsomeness but she was sure that he was very popular with the ladies despite his looks. The thought of her husband in the arms of some other lady caused a strange stirring of disquiet in her stomach. She didn’t want to imagine any such thing but she was nearly positive that he had a mistress tucked away somewhere.
    “Do you have a mistress, your grace?” she asked with a benign look. She met his gaze, one brow tilted slightly.
    “Pardon me?” His wife’s candor was going to be a constant trial, he suspected. “That is not a topic for gently bred females,” he snapped. Perhaps he should have married a woman who had at least heard of him. She’d not have the courage to talk back.
    “You are a one to talk about propriety,” his wife scoffed. “Besides, illegitimacy is not a topic suitable for drawing room conversation and yet that’s precisely what I am.”
    “That has nothing to do with my mistress,” he snapped. Really, why did the chit want to know something like that?
    “Very well, your grace,” she returned equably. “I will desist from questioning you about her. Perhaps I will meet her one day,” she mused.
    “Over my dead body,” Derringer muttered.
    “Oh, never say such a thing, your grace!” Leandra exclaimed with feigned horror. “I would hate to see you die just so I could meet your light-o’-love.”
    Derringer’s eyes narrowed. His bride of only a few hours gazed back with wide-eyed concern, but he thought a twinkle of mirth lurked behind her thick spectacles.
    “Why do you wear those ugly things?” he grumbled.
    “What ugly things?”
    He pointed his whip at her face and nodded.
    “My spectacles, sir?” She laughed delightedly, a dimple peeking out of her left cheek. “I can’t see without them, your grace.”
    “But they’re ugly,” the duke insisted stubbornly.
    “What is that to the point?” she asked with a twinkle. “It is not as if my own looks will be improved overmuch with their swift removal. And I find I much prefer to be able to see where we are going and where we’ve been.”
    Derringer looked around at the boring pastureland through which they were currently passing and wondered if perhaps she needed stronger lenses in her spectacles. He glanced at her again and was a trifle disconcerted to realize she watched him very closely. He frowned at her. She smiled back.
    He went on the attack as he always did when he felt cornered. He let his dark eyes slide over her insolently until her smile disappeared and she flushed. How he managed this and kept his team on the road had everything to do his exceptional skill as a first rate whip.
    With just the right amount of contempt in his deep voice, Derringer inquired, “And the ugly bonnet and cloak? I noticed your dress is about as becoming as a flour sack. If you were raised as Harwood’s daughter I would have thought he