The Marriage List Read Free Page B

much to bear. May felt at a loss. What should she do? Salvaging this confrontation with the viscount was clearly beyond hope. She sprang to her feet. Coming to his home was a mistake. A blot on her normally logical mind.
    “My lords,”—she swept the room with her most menacing glare—“since you are unwilling to listen to my plight and help a gentlewoman in need, I believe I have no choice but to bring this farce to an end. Good day.”
    She snatched up Iona by the wrist and bolted from the room.
    “It was truly a pleasure,” Iona had the grace to call as they rushed out into the drizzly rains without the protection of their cloaks and worse . . . without having accomplished anything beyond making complete and utter fools of themselves.
    “A pleasure, you say? Viscount Evers can take his cursed home with all its cursed expensive hand-painted fineries and go straight to the devil for all I care!”

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 2

    “Did Miss Sheffers just wish you to the devil?”
    Wynter’s wide gaze and gaping mouth went beyond shocked. The man appeared utterly flabbergasted, a look Radford had never associated with his even-keeled friend.
    “I believe she did.” A smile creased the corners of Radford’s lips. He eased down onto the sofa the women had vacated. Three half filled round teacups stared up at him from the side table next to him. The fourth little cup in the set, missing. “I believe she also pilfered from my fine china.”
    Miss Margaret Sheffers.
    Before an hour ago, he hadn’t the slightest clue that the lady existed, let alone that she resided on one of his properties. She was the kind of woman he generally overlooked. Gently shabby, small, with not one extraordinary feature to attract a man save for a pair of unusually vivid violet eyes—before today he’d guess such a woman would make a fine lady’s companion or governess, fading into the draperies. She was of so little import her initial burst into the room had his gaze shifting to the alluring Lady Iona, not her. So just how did such a woman manage to leave him with his heart throbbing in his chest?
    “The marriage list we’ve just completed,” Radford said and thrust out his hand. “I believe you stuffed it in your pocket.”
    Wynter eyed Radford for several moments before pulling the crumpled piece of foolscap from his pants pocket and dropping it into Radford’s palm. “What in blazes was that all about, Evers?” The note of anger was unmistakable . . . and completely a surprise.
    “What was what?” Radford asked somewhat absently. He struggled to his feet so he could pace like a normal man while he reviewed the list of qualities he’d demand in a wife.
    “Your damned behavior, is what. I’ve never witnessed a ruder display. Is this how you plan to woo a wife? If you do, you had better start preparing for a long bachelorhood.”
    “I just wished to ascertain their qualifications.” No vagaries on his list, nothing left to chance.
    “Qualifications, Evers? This isn’t Tattersal’s where you can pry open their mouths and peek inside. You have to use your charm. Before you bought that bloody commission, all you had to do was wink and every damned woman in sight would swoon.”
    “That man no longer exists. For one thing, I am no longer a prime pick. Look at me! I’m a cripple, naught but half a man.”
    Wynter sighed, long and loud. “It’s your acid tongue, not your injury that scares women.”
    Radford continued to pace, feeling his limp grow more pronounced. The pain in his foot returned with a vengeance.
    How was it that for the past half-hour he’d been free of the searing pain? Something about pricking the anger of a plain, utterly forgettable faded bloom had completely erased the state of his injured body from his mind.
    “Perhaps a wife is exactly what I need.”
    “Bloody funny way of going about finding one.” Wynter helped himself to a second serving of claret. He held up the decanter, offering