Secrets of a Scandalous Bride Read Free Page A

will stop looking for you. There’s a gaggle of Wellington’s finest out there with enough gold braid to excite a small village’s worth of skirts.”
    She returned his hat without a word and tried to rearrange her hair without success. “May I have my fichu back?”
    He tossed it to her and palmed his finely tooled crop. Crossing the space between them, he tickled her tightly clenched jaw with the end loop. “What, no tears? No explanations? Good. Now give me your nibs and nabs.”
    “Nibs and nabs?” she finally spoke, expelling her breath in a rush.
    “You know, those nasty sharp bits or anything else you might foolishly try to use to thank me .”
    “Mr. Manning, I know you’ll be surprised to learn that I don’t have any nibs or nabs on my person,” she said with all the primness of a schoolmistress. Not that he had spent a moment in school. But he could imagine.
    “No? Perhaps a search is in order then,” he said, trying to raise the edge of her gown’s hem with his crop.
    She swatted it away and looked at him sourly. “Look, I thank you for your quick thinking—your performance . Really, I had no idea…And to reassure you, I’ve every intention of properly repaying you.” She brushed the corner of the curtain and glimpsed outside again. Oh, they were nearing Lamb’s Conduit Fields, where she knew someone who might very wellcome to her aid. “Would you be so kind as to deposit me at the gates of the foundling home?”
    “No,” he said, without hesitation.
    She jerked her attention back to him. “No? Whatever do you mean?”
    He ignored her lip-flapping.
    “Surely you trust a lady to repay her debts, sir.”
    He gave her a lazy half smile. “You’re good. You’ve got that righteous air down pat. And you’ve fooled those toffs well enough. Helston is doubtlessly duped, as are Ellesmere, Wallace, and all their brides.”
    “You’re absolutely right, sir.”
    He watched her pleat her hands tightly.
    “Hmmm. Well, while I consider the terms of payment for saving your hide, madam, we’re for my stable yard. Nobs plump with coin won’t wait. We can’t have them trotting their fickle hides over to that damned uppity fellow Tattersall’s sticks, now can we? The pleasure of attending to you will just have to wait.”
    Before she could respond, the carriage jerked to a halt, and Rowland leapt out without waiting for the step to be swung into place.
    He breathed in the air, which was filled with the sweet, raw fragrance of fresh pine and cut stone, the scent of new construction— and debt . It was as far removed from the aromas of his past as it could be.
    Three classical structures of pale limestone fronted a sprawling, vast series of smaller buildings and enclosures. Stable hands, dressed in the dark blue and yellow colors of the stables, performed their jobs with workmanlike precision, feeding, watering, washing,working the animals with well-honed precision. But above all, it was the beauty of the animals that stood out. They were the only things that mattered.
    “You cannot hold me against my will,” the lovely little fraud insisted, moving to his side.
    Her words drew him back to the moment. “No?”
    “No! Now look, I insist your driver take me to—”
    “Lefroy, Mrs….” he looked at her expectantly.
    “Ashburton,” she answered, exasperated.
    “Mrs. Ashburton has a fondness for storerooms,” he said with heavy sarcasm. “Show her ours.”
    “But, Mr. Manning. I must be allowed to send a note to the dowager duchess, and to—”
    He turned toward the main massive yard now filling with gleaming silk and beaver hats and equally gleaming horseflesh. “You’re boring me, Mrs. Ashburton.” He waved his hand languorously in the air.
    A hint of a breeze in the warm air carried her next words back to him.
    “The feeling is entirely mutual, sir.”
    He didn’t pause, yet he couldn’t stop the smallest bit of amusement from tickling his lips. Oh, she would prove an excellent