The Devil Who Tamed Her Read Free Page B

even to speak! She had dismissed them, one after the other. The count had risen to a dozen when this one applied for the job.
    Sadie O’Donald wasn’t the least bit in awe of or intimidated by Ophelia. She scoffed at a sharp tone, she laughed at a severe look. She’d raised six daughters of her own, so there wasn’t much that could disturb her in the way of theatrics, as she called most of Ophelia’s displays of temper. Middle-aged and plump, with black hair and dark brown eyes, Sadie was frank, brutally so sometimes. She wasn’t actually Irish as her name implied. She’d once confessed that her grandfather had merely borrowed the name when he’d wanted to change his own.
    For once, Ophelia didn’t react to Sadie’s silence as she usually did, by telling all. Most people who knew her knew she’d get right to the point if they stopped asking questions. She detested this appalling flaw of hers, but then, she detested all her flaws.
    But without the answer forthcoming, Sadie’s curiosity got the better of her. After all, there was supposed to have been a wedding this morning, Ophelia’s, yet Ophelia had found Sadie and told her to have them both packed and ready to leave Summers Glade in no less than five minutes, because they were going home to London immediately. It had taken twenty minutes to pack, but that was still probably the fastest Sadie had ever thrown clothes into a trunk.
    “Leaving him at the altar then, are we?” Sadie pressed.
    “No,” Ophelia said stiffly. “And I really don’t want to talk about it.”
    “But you said you’d have to marry the Scotsman, that there was no getting out of it after Mavis caught the two of you in your bedroom alone. I know that pleased you well enough when it happened since you wanted him back, if only to end the gossip that occurred when he ended your first engagement. Then you changed your mind and wanted no part of him—”
    “You know why!” Ophelia cut in sharply. “He and his grandfather were going to turn me into a country bumpkin. The very idea! No entertaining, no time for socializing. Just work, work, work! Me!”
    “You were resigned to it, dear. What—?”
    Ophelia interrupted again, snapping, “Did I have a choice, when Mavis was going to ruin me if I didn’t marry that rude barbarian?”
    “I thought you agreed that he wasn’t really a barbarian? You were the one who started the rumor before you had even met him, just so your parents would hear of it and break off the engagement for you.”
    Ophelia glared at her maid. “What has that to do with anything? That was before, not now. And it didn’t even work! They still dragged me to Summers Glade to meet him. And look how that turned out. One little thoughtless remark on my part and he’s so insulted he breaks off the engagement. But I didn’t intend to insult him, you know. It wasn’t my fault that he shocked me when he came into the room wearing a kilt. As if I’d ever seen a man wearing a kilt before,” Ophelia ended with a huff.
    “As if you wouldn’t have said exactly what you did if you had thought about it,” Sadie countered, knowing her too well.
    Ophelia almost grinned. “Well, probably. But only because I was desperate by then. They said he’d lived his whole life in the Highlands. You know I feared he really would be a barbarian, or I never would have gotten the idea to brand him one in the gossip mills.”
    “But you finally agreed he’d do very well as a husband.”
    “Honestly, Sadie, you aren’t usually this obtuse,” Ophelia said with a sigh. “Yes, he suited me just fine until his grandfather outlined the long list of duties they expected of me. All I ever wanted was to be a social matriarch, to give the grandest parties London has ever seen. My balls would be the only balls worth attending. That’s what I want out of my marriage, not to rusticate out in the country, which is what Neville Thackeray had planned for me.”
    “So you’re running away?”