So Wild a Heart Read Free Page A

do is come to dinner and meet her."
    Devin let out a low groan. A dinner at his mother's house ranked almost as low on his list of preferred things as meeting an American heiress.
    "I will be there, too," Rachel put in encouragingly. "Do say you'll come, Dev."
    "Oh, all right," he said grudgingly. "I will come tonight and meet the girl."
    ******************
    The "girl"—much to Lord Ravenscar's astonishment, if he had known it—was at that very moment engaged in a war of words with her family along the same lines.
    "Papa," Miranda Upshaw said firmly, "I am not marrying a man I've never even seen, no matter how eager you are to get your hands on a British estate. It's positively medieval."
    She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at her father implacably. Miranda was a pretty woman, with large, expressive gray eyes and a thick mane of chestnut hair. Her figure was small and compact, nicely curved beneath the high-waisted blue cambric gown she wore, but her force of personality was such that people often came away with the impression that Miranda was a tall woman.
    Joseph Upshaw gazed back at his daughter, his arms and face set in a mirror image of hers. He was a barrel-chested man not much taller than his daughter, whose lithe build had obviously come to her from her mother. He was as used to having his way as his daughter was, and they had gone head-to-head with each other on more than one occasion.
    "I’m not asking you to marry him tomorrow," he said bow in a reasonable tone. "All you have to do is go to his mother's house tonight and meet the man. After that, you can take all the time you want getting to know him."
    "I doubt I shall want to get to know him. He probably has spindly calves and squinty eyes and...and thinning hair. Why else is his family so eager to marry him off? Even without money, an earl should be a good catch. Surely there are wealthy Englishmen who would be willing to sell their daughters for a title."
    "Are you saying I'm selling you?" her father retorted indignantly. "That's a fine thing to say about a man who's trying to give you one of the oldest and best names in this country. If there's any selling going on, I'm the one buying him for you."
    "But I don't want him." Miranda knew as well as her father did that in reality he was wanting to buy a son-in-law for himself more than a husband for Miranda. Ever since Miranda could remember, Joseph had been an Anglophile, reading everything he could get his hands on about the English aristocracy—their rankings, their histories, their estates. He was fascinated with English castles and mansions, and wanted desperately to get his hands on one.
    "How can you turn him down when you haven't even seen the man?" he asked her now. "He's an earl. You would be a countess! Just think how pleased Elizabeth would be. As soon as she's feeling not so under the weather, I'm going to tell her all about it. She will be thrilled."
    "I am sure she will," Miranda replied dryly. Her stepmother, Elizabeth, herself English, was even more enamored of the idea of Miranda marrying British nobility than Joseph was. She had come from a 'good family' herself, she was fond of telling whoever would listen; and the improvident, impetuous husband who had brought her to New York, then committed the final folly of catching a chill and dying, leaving her stranded in the New World with a baby daughter, had come from a family even higher up the social scale. Her dream was for her daughter Veronica, now fourteen, to live in the world of British aristocracy—to have her coming out, to hobnob with the members of the Ton, to marry a suitably noble husband. The easiest method of accomplishing this dream, she had decided, was for Miranda to marry into the aforesaid aristocracy and then bring Veronica out in a few years.
    "You know how fond I am of Elizabeth," Miranda went on. "She is the only mother I've ever known, and she has always been quite kind to me." Possessed of a kind, easygoing,