The Seduction of Miss Amelia Bell Read Free Page A

some of the
     drivel if ye ever mean to sing in Camlochlin’s halls.”
    Darach swore something about singing that was lost on the wind as he kicked his stallion
     into a full gallop.
    The dog that traveled with them had been Edmund’s from the moment it left its mother’s
     body. Ears perked at Darach’s furious departure, the beast merrily joined in the chase,
     catching up quickly with its prey.
    “Sometimes,” Edmund said over Grendel’s loud barking and Darach’s subsequent shouts
     for the mongrel to let him go, “I think Darach enjoys having his arse removed from
     his saddle several times a day.”
    “Aye,” Malcolm agreed, taking Luke’s place beside Edmund and watching the commotion
     ahead. “He’s the source of every silver hair on his mother’s head.”
    Edmund laughed and then cringed a little at the oaths spilling from Darach’s lips,
     so unlike the eloquent poetry his father produced.
    “Grendel!” he called out to the monstrous hound running away with Darach’s bonnet
     between his teeth and Darach losing ground behind him. “Good boy!”
    Malcolm cheered the dog, then turned to his best friend. “If only we could get Grendel
     to close his jaws around Queensberry’s throat. After the duke shyt his breeches we
     could convince him not to sign.”
    Edmund shook his head and smiled, watching his dog run in wide circles while Darach
     chased him. “Grendel wouldn’t harm a fly,” he said, his smile fading. “’Tis me whom
     the duke should fear.”

Chapter Two
    I swear on m’ dead mother, ’twas longer than m’ forearm.”
    Lady Amelia Bell stared, eyes wide, her mouth gaping slightly at her best friend,
     who was sitting across from her on the bed, and then the two burst into laughter.
    “’Twasn’t humorous when I laid m’ eyes upon it,” Sarah Frazier confided, her green
     eyes bright with wickedness. “I felt like Eve when she first spied the serpent in
     the garden. I wanted to run, but the temptation was too great.”
    Amelia gasped behind her palm. “Oh, Sarah! That is positively blasphemous!”
    Sarah shook her head and flicked a lock of auburn hair off her shoulder. “Ye concern
     yourself overmuch with what others think.”
    “I don’t!” Amelia charged, removing her hand from her mouth to fold her arms across
     her chest. “Save fer my father’s poor sake,” she added as an afterthought, always
     plagued by the troubles she caused him. “Do ye think I would sneak through the gardens
     to come and hear all yer sordid secrets if I cared what others thought? Ye know what
     my mother or uncle would do if they found out.”
    “Aye,” Sarah agreed with her, falling back onto the mattress. “I don’t know which
     would anger them more, the topic of our conversations, or that ye sometimes spend
     yer nights in the servant’s quarters.”
    “Both.” Amelia yawned and stretched out beside her.
    “But still ye come.”
    Turning to her, Amelia took her hand and held it to her cheek. “Ye have always been
     my dearest friend. I will never let my uncle’s title or my mother’s rigid intolerances
     stand in the way of that. I will do what I believe is right.”
    Sarah’s smile softened against the flickering light of the twin candle flames and
     then faded. “Do ye believe that marryin’ the chancellor is the right thing then?”
    Amelia looked away and shook her head. “It’s the right thing to do fer my parents,
     Sarah. My mother—”
    “Yer mother is as much an insufferable snob as yer betrothed. Amelia, ye will not
     be happy as Walter Hamilton’s wife!”
    Amelia knew her friend was correct, but what could she do? Bring disgrace on her parents
     yet again by rejecting a marriage proposal from the chancellor of Scotland? Her mother
     would never forgive her and her father, well, he never blamed her but wasn’t it bad
     enough that she was the reason for every gray hair on his head? “My sisters did not
     want to marry their husbands, Sarah. We