How to Marry a Highlander Read Free Page B

dockyards. Those years when all he’d wanted was to forget the pain.
    He tore off the tunic and dressed. A soft knock came at the door. Tying his cravat, he opened it a crack. Una poked her head in.
    “Brither, ye’ve a caller.”
    He frowned. Few knew the location of his hired rooms in London. “Be ye certain?”
    “Aye. And Duncan . . .” Una’s blue eyes sparkled. “She’s a bonnie young Sassenach.”
    I t would have been remarkable if Teresa had not been quivering in her prettiest slippers. Six pairs of eyes stared at her as though she wore horns atop her hat. She was astounded she had not yet turned and run. Desperation and determination were all well and good when one was sitting in Mrs. Biddycock’s parlor, traveling in one’s best friend’s commodious carriage, and living in one’s best friend’s comfortable town house. But standing in a strange flat in an alien part of town anticipating meeting the man one has been dreaming about for eighteen months while being studied intensely by his female relatives did give one pause.
    Her cheeks felt like flame, which was dispiriting; when she blushed her hair looked glaringly orange in contrast. And this was not the romantic setting in which she had long imagined they would again encounter each other—another ballroom glittering with candlelight, or a rose-trellised garden path in the moonlight, or even a field of waving heather aglow in sunshine. Instead now she stood in a dingy little flat three stories above what looked suspiciously like a gin house.
    But desperate times called for desperate measures. She gripped the rim of her bonnet before her and tried to still her nerves.
    The sister that had gone to fetch him reappeared in the doorway and smiled. “Here he is, then, miss.”
    A heavy tread sounded on the squeaking floorboards. Teresa’s breaths fled.
    Then he was standing not two yards away, filling the doorway, and . . .
    she . . .
    was . . .
    speechless.
    Even if words had occurred to her, she could not have uttered a sound. Both her tongue and wits had gone on holiday to the colonies.
    No wonder she had dreamed .
    From his square jaw to the massive breadth of his shoulders to his dark hair tied in a queue, he was everything she had ever imagined a man should be. Aside from the neat whiskers skirting his mouth that looked positively barbaric and thrillingly virile, he was exactly as she remembered him. In seeing him now, indeed, she realized that she had not forgotten a single detail of him from that night in the ballroom.
    But more than his eyes and muscles and all those other manly bits of him drew her. Much more. The very fibers of her body seemed to recognize him, as though she already knew how it felt for him to take her hand. Just as on that night eighteen months ago, now an invisible wind pressed at her back, urging her to move toward him, like a magnet drawn to a metal object. As though they were meant to be touching.
    Despite the momentous tumult within her, however, Teresa could see quite clearly in his intensely blue eyes a stark lack of any recognition whatsoever.

 

C HAPTER T HREE
----
    “W eel?” The single word was a booming accusation. “Who be ye, lass, and what do ye be wanting from me?”
    It occurred to Teresa at this moment that she could either be thoroughly devastated by this unanticipated scenario and subsequently flee in utter shame, or she could continue as planned.
    An image came to her: herself kneeling at the Reverend Elijah Waldon’s feet, offering his slippers while he sat in his favorite chair before the fire reading from Butler’s collected sermons.
    She gripped her bonnet tighter.
    “How do you do, my lord? I am Teresa Finch-Freeworth of Brennon Manor at Harrows Court Crossing in Cheshire.” She curtseyed upon legs that felt like pork aspic.
    His brow creased. “And?”
    “And . . .” It was proving difficult to breathe. “I have come here to offer to you my hand in