Just One Kiss Read Free Page B

evaporated instantly. Suddenly, everything seemed to move in slow motion. 
     
    Edward knew how compromising a situation he was in.  He was kissing an unmarried girl, in his bedroom, with the door firmly shut and his coat and waistcoat still draped across the bed.  If Anthony had held his silence, the consequences might have been avoided, but he did not.  His bellow alerted the entire house, and the fury on his face meant he was not going to listen to reason. Hargreaves dragged his sister home, but Edward knew that he’d be back.
     
    Anthony marched back to Packwood House the afternoon of the incident, still breathing fire.  He demanded satisfaction for his sister, and Edward had no choice but to submit to his demands.  The kiss had been intriguing, true, but not enough to build a marriage upon.  Edward had reached an understanding with Miss Winston, their engagement was about to be announced, and he did not wish to be thought of as a man who trifled with young ladies’ hearts.  However, in the end, the choice was simple.  He did not want to marry Daphne Hargreaves , but he did not want to murder her brother either.  It would have come to that; Anthony had arrived with pistols, and Edward could extract himself from the situation in only three ways: married, wanted, or dead.
     
    They might have been content.
     
    The Earl could think of any number of couples who had not precisely been in love on the event of their nuptials, but who had grown easy in each other’s company over time.  Looking back over the years, Edward couldn’t remember precisely what it was which had made him so determined to see Daphne punished for what she had done.  After all, she was only a silly girl.  She had been impossibly youn g, and perhaps entitled to be foolish.  Still, he could not find a way to forgive her the carelessness with which she had treated his life.
     
    “I love you,” she had said that morning.  The memory still made his lips twist into a bitter smirk.  She supposedly loved him, and yet she had no concern for his own feelings before she thrust herself into his life.  She hadn’t inquired about his interests or his plans for life. 
     
    It was, perhaps, attributable to a defect in his character, but the loss of Miss Winston did not sting nearly as deeply as the loss of his independence, or of his dreams of going abroad to see the world.  He had nurtured a small fantasy of using his wife’s money to purchase land in the West Indies for sugar, or a farm in one of the other colonies, but Daphne had seen those hopes dashed.  She was not as well provisioned as his intended fiancé.  He would have to content himself with law.
     
    Only, he didn’t.
     
    Edward Everton had never been intentionally perverse.  He rarely acted badly and when he did it was meant to impart a lesson, and not for vicious satisfaction or cruelty’s sake.  But on the evening of their wedding, he had been pushed beyond his bounds.
     
    Daphne had been so deliriously happy at the ceremony.  It was clear to anyone who saw her face that she was positively giddy with joy at the union that was taking place.  Oblivious to the arch glances passed between her guests, she floated down the aisle of the church to his side and seemed fit to explode with joy when she placed her hand in his.  She had achieved her goal, netted her fish, and was satisfied with her result.  He could almost hate her for it.  By the time the vicar pronounced them husband and wife, he wanted nothing so much as to wipe the smile from her impossibly pretty face.
     
    Edward endured cake and toasts at his brother’s house for an hour, and then quietly skulked away.
     
    “Are you tired, darling?”

Edward hadn’t noticed Daphne following in his wake, but he ought not to have been surprised.  She had been glued to his side since they left the church, chattering happily about her plans for their house and her trousseau and the babies they would have, as if