Stealing the Bride Read Free Page A

too well.”
    I just bet you do , Diana seethed.
    “Go to Lord Seaton,” he said, continuing his instructions. “Tell him you have changed your mind. Marry him, Lucette. He will keep you safe.”
    “In Scotland,” she pouted.
    “Yes, in Scotland. But never fear, one day you’ll convince him to bring you back to London. He loves you too much not to fall prey to your requests. Besides, I suspect you have more than just a fond regard for him as well.”
    Some regard , Diana thought, as she watched the girl practically throwing herself at Temple. If she were Lord Seaton, she’d toss the flirtatious baggage into the nearest loch and let her drown.
    To his credit, Temple disengaged himself from his enthusiastic admirer, then escorted her down the alleyway to his waiting carriage.
    Diana tried to breathe in and out in an even keel, as she sorted through the upheaval in her heart.
    Temple hadn’t deserted her three years earlier. He’d just joined the desperate struggle to save England from French tyranny. What had he said to Mademoiselle de Vessay?
    It is too dangerous.
    He probably thought he was saving her from a life of worry and heartache.
    “Wretched fool,” she muttered.
    She would have waited for him—for a dozen years if that was what it would take. She wrung her hands together until she stopped at the recognition of one thing she’d forgotten in all the confusion.
    The emerald and pearl betrothal ring on her finger.
    The horror of her realization sent her bolting down the hall, fleeing back to the civilized world of Bond Street until she stood once again in front of Madame Renard’s millinery shop as if the last ten minutes had never happened. The crunch of carriage wheels caught her attention, and in a blinding flash, the Setchfield carriage sped past her, leaving her alone with the realization that she was engaged to the wrong man.
    “Oh, Temple, why did you do this to us?” she whispered after his departing carriage.
    Too dangerous…too dangerous…
    Damn him, she thought. Damn his foolish sense of honor.
    Well, if Temple could forsake her because his honor and nobility demanded as much, she would do what she suspected women had done since time immemorial. Find a way to persuade him otherwise…no matter how long it took or how many betrothals she had to break.

Chapter 1
    London, 1809
    I t was, by all accounts, a rather typical night at White’s. The men of London’s social elite had gathered together for another evening of drinking and gambling and bragging to their hearts’ content.
    Who would have guessed that these rarefied members of the ton were about to witness the scandal of the Season?
    As usual, the most crowded spot in the great room was around the Marquis of Templeton, or as most people called him, Temple. Not exactly the proper address for a man who by chance, or rather by birth, was the Duke of Setchfield’s heir, but Temple he was, and, many suspected, Temple he would always be.
    Cut off by his imperious grandfather from any family funds because of his wastrel ways and because he wouldn’t bend to the duke’s constant demands, he made do as he could, by being the perfect houseguest, the best of company. In short, he was invited everywhere.
    There were advantages to having the marquis as a part of one’s social event. He knew all the gossip. He could spot an ill-tied cravat across a shadowy room faster than a Bow Street runner could collar a pickpocket. With the aid of his trusty lorgnette, he could tell whether a man’s coat had been stitched by Weston or by a country tradesman copying the master tailor’s latest trends for half the price.
    If you needed to know what color was best to wear to Lady Brickton’s fête, which young miss had the plumpest dowry, or from whom to obtain the finest, fittest, and best polished Hessians, then Temple was your most capable confidant.
    So it was that the marquis moved through the ton like a blithe and welcome breeze, invited everywhere—for