Pride & Passion Read Free Page B

chops he was so fond of twitched with aggravation. While watching her, his lips thinned, and she could almost hear his thoughts. Yes, you are, or you wouldn’t have gotten yourself into trouble a fortnight ago.
    Trouble, Lucy mentally snorted, wasn’t the beginning of what she’d gotten herself into. She’d been impulsive and headstrong, and yes…childish.
    “My dear, I worry for your health is all,” Stonebrook said as the horses pulled the carriage up the sloped drive of Black’s town house. “You’ve not been yourself for months now, and while I know you would wish to have your mama here for these sorts of discussions, surely you must know that Lady Black would listen and help you with anything that might be troubling you. If it is Sussex, then may I suggest you talk with your cousin about it? Isabella will affirm what I’ve always believed, that you and the duke will get on well.”
    Lucy hid her grimace. Her father had no idea what had happened all those months ago with Thomas, and she prayed he never would. He would never understand, never credit the notion of love and unbridled passions. That he was fobbing her off onto Isabella was very typical of the sort of parent he had always been.
    “Ah, look, there she is now, waiting for us.”
    Sitting forward, she saw Isabella standing just insidethe covered alcove of her new home. She was looking radiant, and carried the expression of a woman well-loved—and loved passionately. A bitter tang of envy resonated through Lucy’s soul. She wanted the very same thing. And she would have it.
    “Uncle. Lucy,” Isabella called as the footman opened door. “Come in.”
    “I daresay I cannot, Lady Black,” her father returned as he ushered Lucy through the door, and out into the chilly drizzle. “But Lady Lucy is more than eager to take up your generous offer.”
    Seconds later, Lucy found herself ushered up the steps, and into the warm entrance hall. Billings, the butler, was taking her bonnet and cloak, and Isabella was tugging her along, into the private salon she used to entertain Elizabeth and herself.
    “When was it arranged that you would child-mind me for the day?”
    Isabella’s lovely eyes widened with feigned shock. “Oh, Lucy, how can you say that?”
    “Very easily, you’ve been my companion—I daresay my governess—for the past two weeks. And no doubt my father’s coconspirator in arranging my marriage to the Duke of Sussex.”
    Flopping down onto the settee, Isabella began toying with the thick fringe of tassels that decorated a pillow. “Your father wants only the very best for you, and after you…well, after you were poisoned he became consumed with worry. He knows something is wrong, Lucy.”
    “I don’t know how. He’s never home, and when heis, he spends hardly any time engaged in conversation. He’s perpetually buried in his study.”
    “Do not be cross with his lordship, Lucy, for he is not the only one who is worried about you. I am, as well.”
    Isabella reached for her hand; her smile was kind and filled with sympathy and it made Lucy want to run away and hide. She didn’t want to be pitied. “Is there anything I might do for you, Lucy?”
    “Well, you might start talking some sense into my father.”
    “About?”
    “His dimwitted idea to thrust me onto Sussex as his duchess.”
    “Dimwitted? I think it brilliant.”
    “You wouldn’t say that if you were the one that was being forced to marry him.”
    Isabella glanced at her slyly. “The duke is very handsome, I dare say.”
    Lucy glowered. “Handsome is only enticing when you are eighteen and a naive ninny.” Or twelve, and experiencing the pleasures of your first crush, and yes, absolute adoration if she must be honest with herself. She’d never forgotten Gabriel, and the sad, haunted look in his lovely gray eyes that were always a little too sunken from hunger.
    “Lucy, handsome is an attribute appealing to any female, of any age.”
    “I am afraid my