Scandal's Bride Read Free

openly, arrogantly, like a chieftain.
    Like a warrior.
    Catriona frowned. She kept stumbling across that word, but she didn't
need a warrior—she needed a tame, complaisant, preferably readily besotted
gentleman she could marry and so beget an heiress. This man fitted her
prescription in only one respect—he was indisputably male. The Lady, She Who
Knew All, couldn't possibly mean this man for her.
    "But if not that, then what?" Pushing aside the silver bowl,
she leaned on the table and cupped her chin in one hand. "I must be
getting my messages crossed." But she hadn't done that since she was
fourteen. "Perhaps there are two of them?"
    "Two of whom?" Algaria hovered near. "What was the
vision?"
    Catriona shook her head. The matter was too personal—too sensitive—to
divulge to anyone else, even Algaria, her mentor since her mother's death. Not
until she'd got to the truth of the matter herself and understood it fully.
    Whatever it was she was supposed to understand.
    "It's no use." Determinedly, she stood. "I must consult
The Lady directly."
    "What?
Now
?" Algaria stared "It's freezing
outside."
    "I'm only going to the circle at the end of the graveyard. I won't
be out long." She hated uncertainty, not being sure of her road. And this
time, uncertainty had brought an unusual tenseness, a sense of expectation, an
unsettling presentiment of excitement. Not the sort of excitement she was
accustomed to, either, but something more scintillating, more enticing.
Swinging her cloak about her, she looped the ribbons at her throat.
    "There's a gentleman downstairs." Algaria's black eyes
flashed. "He's one you should avoid."
    "Oh?" Catriona hesitated. Could her man be here, under the
same roof? The tension that gripped her hardened her resolve, she tied off her
ribbons. "I'll make sure he doesn't see me. And everyone in the village
knows me by sight—at least, this sight." She released her knotted hair,
letting it swish about her shoulders. "There's no danger here."
    Algaria sighed. "Very well—but don't dally. I suppose you'll tell
me what this is all about when you can."
    From the door, Catriona flashed her a smile. "I promise. Just as
soon as I'm sure."
    Halfway down the stairs, she saw the gentleman, short, rotund, and
fastidiously dressed, checking the discarded news sheets in the inn's main
parlor. His face was as circular as his form, he was definitely not her
warrior. Catriona slipped silently down the hall. It was the work of a minute
to ease open the heavy door, not yet latched for the night.
    And then she was outside
    Pausing on the inn's stone step, she breathed in the crisp, chilly air,
and felt the cold reach her head. Invigorated, she pulled her cloak close and
stepped out, watching her feet, careful not to slip on the icing snow.
    In the graveyard, in the lee of one wall, Richard looked down at his
mother's grave. The inscription on the headstone was brief:
Lady Eleanor
McEnery, wife of Seamus McEnery, Laird of Keltyhead
. That, and nothing more.
No affectionate remembrance; no mention of the bastard son she'd left behind.
    Richard's expression didn't change; he'd come to terms with his status
long ago. When he'd been abandoned on his father's doorstep, Helena, Devil's
mother, had stunned everyone by claiming him as her own. In doing so, she'd
given him his place in the ton—no one, even now, would risk her displeasure, or
that of the entire Cynster clan, by so much as hinting he was not who she
claimed he was. His father's legitimate son. Instinctively shrewd, ebulliently
generous, Helena had secured for him his position in society's elite, for
which, in his heart, he had never ceased to thank her.
    The woman whose bones lay beneath this cold stone had, however, given
him life—and he could do nothing to thank her.
    Except, perhaps, to live life fully.
    His only knowledge of his mother had come from his father, when, in all
innocence, he'd asked if his father had loved his mother, Sebastian had ruffled
his hair