Promise Me Forever Read Free

Hers had especially. All women, young and old, fair and plain. He never discriminated.
    She released a self-conscious laugh. “At least that’s what I remember about a cowboy.” Her cowboy.
    “Oh, I like the adoring women part,” Lady Blythe said. “Our gentlemen tend to take us for granted, I believe. Even when they go through the proper motions, they do so simply because it’s expected, not necessarily because they desire to put forth the effort. All a man truly cares about is that a woman is perfectly capable of quickly providing an heir and a spare. Frightfully unromantic.”
    “On the other hand, cowboys aren’t quite as refined as the gentlemen here,” Lauren admitted. “Their gifts tend to be bits of hair ribbon, or flowers stolen from someone’s garden in passing, or lines of atrocious poetry.”
    “But if the gifts are given from the heart…” Lady Anne’s wistful voice trailed off.
    “Well, I daresay this cowboy lord won’t be stealing flowers,” Lady Blythe interjected. “As I said, it is rumored that he is quite well off. Even without his inheritance, supposedly he is to be envied.”
    “Envied?” Lauren repeated. “Envied because he achieved success through hard work? Envied because he must now leave behind what he knows and live in a country that is far different from that with which he is familiar?”
    “We are not that different,” Lady Blythe said. “Besides, what is to be envied is his wealth.”
    “Which he earned.”
    “And his most fortunate wife shall have the plea sure of spending.”
    “Earlier you were of the opinion that he’d have difficulty securing a wife,” Lauren reminded her.
    Lady Blythe smiled as though she were suddenly superior. “One never knows. When a man has enough coins in his pockets and a title as well, a good deal that one might find distasteful can be overlooked.”
    “Although one can’t deny, as Miss Fairfield reminded us, that he earned his money. Terribly unfortunate that,” Lady Cassandra said.
    “But he earned it before he knew he was an earl,” Lady Blythe said, “so surely it is a forgivable offense.”
    Lauren found herself feeling incredible empathy for the man, who undoubtedly was about to have a strange new life thrust upon him as she’d once had one thrust upon her. Perhaps she would seek him out and advise him to return to Texas as quickly as possible, before he was shaped and molded into an aristocrat, blending in with everyone else, no longer his own man with his own thoughts, opinions, and dreams.
     
    He heard her voice—surprised that he could identify it after all these years. It had changed slightly, he couldn’t deny that. Grown softer, with a gentler timbre that could lure a man in before he realized he was well and truly captivated.
    That’s how Thomas Warner felt. Captivated.
    And he sure as hell didn’t want to be.
    There wasn’t much in life that Tom dreaded, but he’d been dreading this encounter from the moment that it had dawned on him that sooner or later it would come to pass. He’d put it off as long as he could, and now that it was about to happen, he was torn between wishing it had come along sooner and wishing that it had never arrived.
    While the butler—in a snit because Tom didn’t have a proper calling card—had gone to inform the Earl of Ravenleigh that Tom had come to call, Tom had been standing in the entry hallway, cooling his heels, waiting. But he hadn’t been doing it patiently. Being accustomed to giving the orders and having them obeyed without question, he wasn’t used to waiting on any man.
    Then he’d heard the voices, talking almost too fast to decipher…then her voice. She’d lost a good bit of the slow drawl that had once been music to his ears, but he could still hear it when she spoke certain words, like a memorable chord wafting off a fiddle. So he found himself listening intently for the familiar.
    He’d eased over to the doorway, leaned against the doorjamb, and