The Pride of Lions Read Free Page A

have gone back and used it with the greatest of pleasure!
    Catherine rode into the courtyard of Rosewood Hall, the roan’s hooves beating an angry tattoo on the cobblestones. A groom, alerted by the sound, came rushing out of the stables and arrived by her side in time to catch the tossed reins.
    “See that she is given an extra rasher of oats,” Catherine ordered. “And walk her well: She has had a hard run.”
    Still bristling over the encounter in the woods, she barely heard the groom’s muttered response as she strode toward the main house.
    Catherine’s furious pace slowed as she followed one of the many garden paths around to the front of the house. Rosewood Hall was built in the Elizabethan style, a two-storey manor with white plastered cornices and pilasters accentuating the rows of tall, multipaned windows. Columns of ivy and lichen clung to the red brick walls and climbed as high as the steeply sloped gray slate roof. There was no porch or terrace fronting the main entrance, but the double doors were housed between two massive turrets consisting of floor-to-ceiling bow windows. The pediment over the doorway was engraved with the family crest, a testament to the noble lineage of the Ashbrooke name.
    Catherine was feeling anything but noble as she neared the porticoed entrance. One of the carved oak doors swung open just as she was about to reach for the latch, and her brother stepped out into the dazzling sunlight, his lean form looking especially handsome in a chocolate-brown broadcloth coat and fawn breeches.
    “Whoa up there. Has the hunt run the course and left you behind?”
    “No, it has not. I simply decided it was not worth all the sweat and bother. The sound of braying dogs leaves me with a migraine, as does the sight of grown men cheering while a pack of blood-crazed hounds tears apart a cornered fox.”
    “My sister the humanitarian,” he chided wryly. “The same one who goes quail hunting and shoots helpless little feathered creatures full of lead shot.”
    “Those helpless little feathered creatures provide us with dinner, brother mine, while hapless little foxes only provide bloodthirsty men with a morning’s diversion. And why are you not in your scarlets? Has Harriet Chalmers had the good sense to snub you again?”
    Damien Ashbrooke offered up an easy smile. He was of medium height, not much taller than Catherine, with pale blue eyes and a shock of long, wavy chestnut hair worn neatly clubbed at the nape of his neck.
    “No, the lovely Mistress Chalmers has not snubbed me. If anything, I was hoping to use these few brief hours of solitude to catch up on my reading.”
    Catherine’s eyes narrowed. “She will have you wed, regardless of how you try to avoid her company.”
    “Is that so? Well, unless I have missed something along the way, the man is still the one who does the proposing.”
    She stuck out the tip of her tongue and pertly misquoted, “Thou dost protest too much, methinks. I have seen the way you ogle Harriet: like a wide-eyed lapdog, oblivious to everything but the wealth of charms that pour over the top of her bodice.”
    He arched an eyebrow as he took in the tumbled state of her hair and clothing. “Can that be the voice of jealousy I hear? Or just envy over her sense of proper fashion?”
    Catherine followed her brother’s gaze and swatted at a fold of velvet that had become stuck in the cuff of her boot. “And just what should I be envious of? The way her bosoms threaten to spill out of her gowns at every breath? Or the fact that they probably already have, and your hands have been most willing to catch them?”
    Damien’s cheeks darkened beneath a flush, and she huffed. “There, you see? And you still insist you have some control over your fate? A month, brother dear, and five gold sovereigns say she will have you so frustrated you will be dragging her to the altar.”
    “You’re on,” he murmured. “But only if we can set the same time limit and stakes on