How the Marquess Was Won Read Free Page A

about things like primrose satin and coronets. Her stay with Lisbeth Redmond was also indirectly the reason Phoebe had once been kissed (and if the Redmonds had known this, she certainly wouldn’t have been invited) and the reason she’d decided to leave the country.
    Because staying with a family like the Redmonds—and they were so emphatically a family—had emphasized how she belonged nowhere, to no one, wasn’t particularly wanted, and would never have the things the Redmonds had. It would be not only invigorating, she’d decided, but essential , to start her life over somewhere else entirely, someplace of her choosing, since the tide of fate had rather chosen everything for her to date.
    Still. She could use a little extra money.
    Not to mention a night or two in a featherbed, and excellent meals served on silver, and—
    She would mull the invitation.
    She knew who the other letter was from and what it would say. She would read it later in her rooms at the academy, and mull that, too.
    She looked up when a shadow fell over the letter from Lisbeth. Odd. The day had been so astonishingly clear, so scoured by wind, it seemed unlikely a cloud would ever gain purchase in the sky.
    She turned her head toward the window. And she nearly swayed with shock.
    An enormous, pristine black landau had come to a halt in front of Postlethwaite’s. Phoebe shielded her eyes against the sunbeam that bounced off the glittering glass and gold lamps and ricocheted off her beauty-loving heart before returning to set the coat of arms—gold leaf, from the looks of things—aglow. One of the horses gave its head a coquettish toss and restively raised a fine leg.
    The horse was black.
    Its stockings were white.
    And Phoebe’s heart jumped into her throat.
    Because . . . Mother of God . . . hadn’t the door just jingled . . . ?
    She held her body very gingerly when she turned, because if she was dreaming, she didn’t want to accidentally jar herself awake.
    She saw him, and the air in the room became thinner, headier, as though she’d been jerked up high and deposited on a mountaintop. He seemed taller than . . . anyone. And suddenly all the hats and ribbons and buttons and gloves seemed like gaudy props arranged on a stage, awaiting just his arrival all these years.
    He swept the shop with a glance, taking in ribbons, gloves, Phoebe, hats, watches, her students, reticules, shawls and Postlethwaite, in that order and with equal dispassion.
    His coat and boots were black.
    His shirt and cravat were white.
    And his voice, a baritone edged with smoke, was exactly how she’d imagined it.
    “Dryden,” he said.
    As if it was the answer to all of life’s most important questions.

Chapter 3
    H is name echoed all by itself in the shop long enough for everyone to begin wondering whether they’d imagined he’d spoken.
    Up went one of his black eyebrows. Like an arrow.
    Phoebe saw this in the mirror over the counter. Her view was now of the man’s back, which rivaled the Alps for majesty. His shoulders narrowed to a waist in a line so fundamentally masculine she’d never been more unnervingly aware she was a woman. When he shifted his feet, she could almost sense the lovely slide of muscles beneath the black coat he wore with the same casual grace a panther wears its pelt.
    Phoebe’s students stood frozen in the corner like statues of girls for sale. Their eyes were so round they were more whites than pupil.
    Postlethwaite darted a glance at Phoebe from over the top of his spectacles. She gave the slightest of nods in confirmation. You’re not hallucinating.
    “Mr. Postlethwaite at your service, my lord.” His bow was deep and really very elegant, she thought, even despite the tiny cracking sound his spine made on its way up again. “You honor my humble establishment, indeed! What can I do for you today, my lord?”
    She attempted to steal a glance at Dryden’s gloves, the ones that had allegedly cost one hundred pounds. But