Marriage of Inconvenience Read Free Page A

almost as if their two hearts beat within the same breast.
    He had never had any of that deep bond with Dorothy—except for their love of the children—and he’d always lamented the void in their marriage. As he lamented other things void in their marriage.
    He wanted more than a mother for his children and a competent woman to run his household. He craved a life partner. He’d been lonely for as long as he could remember—not that he would ever admit it. With none of his closest friends was he at liberty to discuss his forward-
thinking views. If he ever did remarry, it must be to a woman whose interests mirrored his own, a woman who cared deeply for him and his children, a woman whom he could love and cherish.
    Such a woman probably did not exist. He took up his pen to dash off a note to his solicitor. Mannington would have to start the process of gathering applicants for the now-open positions on his household staff. But as Aynsley tried to write, he kept picturing Miss Peabody, kept imagining her with little Chuckie on her lap, kept remembering that sparkle that flared in her dark eyes when she challenged him. Most resonating of all, he kept hearing her words: you are making a grave mistake.
    Unexplainably, those words seemed prophetic, like a critical fork in the roadway of his life. As he wrote his few sentences to Mannington, he kept hearing those parting words of hers.
    Could it be that he ought to take heed? What harm could there be in trying to learn more about the unconventional Miss Peabody?

Chapter Two
    F or the past two weeks—since his bizarre visit from Miss Peabody—Aynsley had come to the conclusion he did, indeed, need a wife, a woman possessed of Miss Peabody’s pedigree and scholarship, along with a capacity for affection, which Miss Peabody undoubtedly lacked. Miss Peabody herself was completely out of the question. A more mature woman would be far more satisfactory.
    He entered his house, anxious to read the newest copy of the Edinburgh Review, which had come out that day. On the sideboard in his entry hall—the same sideboard where he’d mistaken Miss Peabody for her lovely sister—he was pleased to find his copy.
    Going straight to his library, he settled before the fire and began to scan the pages in the hopes of finding another excellent essay by P. Corpus. A soft smile lifted the corners of his mouth as he saw Mr. Corpus’s byline.
    This time the learned gentleman wrote a well-thought-out piece favoring the formation of labor unions. “Were the workers better compensated for their labor, this would result in a more equitable society, a society in which crime and other depravities of desperate people would be eradicated.” An excellent conclusion to the thought-provoking piece, he thought, his eyes running over the essay and coming to stop at the author’s name: P. Corpus. He wondered if there was some clue in that pseudonym as to the writer’s true identity. Corpus was Latin for body. P. Body. Peabody!
    How coincidental that Miss Peabody should be on his mind! He found himself wondering if the lady had a brother here in England, but the only brother he knew of still resided in Virginia. Miss Peabody had lived there her whole life before sailing to England a few years ago with her sister, who came to claim the property of her late husband, an Englishman.
    Being raised in the colonies would make one rather more democratic than those raised in England. He wondered if Miss Peabody even concerned herself with English politics. With her nose perpetually buried in a book, she certainly was not like any young woman he’d ever known. It was entirely possible that a woman as intellectually curious as Miss Peabody could conceivably be interested in matters of government.
    Of course she could not possibly have written those political pieces.
    Could she?
    Women—even unconventional ones—had little interest in government. He went to the shelf where the yellowed back editions of the Edinburgh