A Matchmaker's Match Read Online Free

ladies to the drawing room.
    Before she could even settle into a chair, Amanda appeared at her side. “Well, what do you think?”
    Psyche saw Georgie’s inquisitive look. “Not now, Amanda. We’ll talk later.”
    But Amanda would not be put off. She grabbed Psyche by the arm. “Oh, milady, I must know now! Aren’t you agreed? Don’t you think the earl would make me a wonderful husband?”
    Georgie’s small gasp wasn’t lost on Psyche. She felt a rising irritation. If Amanda was going to act this bird-witted, she’d have little chance of success.
    She took the young woman by the arm. “Excuse us, Georgie.”
    Georgie nodded, but she looked ready to burst with curiosity.
    Psyche led Amanda to a secluded corner where she looked at her sternly. “Amanda, when I say not now, I mean not now. If you expect to win a husband, you must learn discretion.”
    Amanda looked surprised, her blue eyes widening in shock, her pink mouth forming an oval of dismay.
    “Suppose,” Psyche continued, “that Lady Standish were to tell the earl what you just said.”
    Amanda’s eyes grew even rounder. “She wouldn’t! She’s your friend.”
    Psyche knew better. Friend or no, if Georgie wanted the earl, she would go after him. And she would use any available means to get him. She sighed. “Amanda, have you never heard the expression—’All’s fair in love and war?’ ”
     

Chapter Three
     
    The next morning Psyche rose early, put on her claret-colored riding habit, and made her way to the stable. Morning air always cleared her mind and this morning it felt in particular need of clearing.
    The events of the previous evening were foremost in her mind as she turned Hesperus away from Tall Oaks. The gelding tossed his handsome head: it was obvious he wanted a good run.
    “Not now,” she told him.“We don’t know this country well enough.”
    She held the horse to a walk, but her mind was not so easily controlled. It insisted on galloping over the events of the night before. Imagine meeting someone like the earl now. If she had met him before, during her Season, there might not have been any need to create Lady Bluestocking.
    But he hadn’t been in London then; he’d been off fighting Napoleon. And so her Season had come— and gone, leaving her unwed.
    Oh, even the second year she might have accepted several offers. But she had continued to play Lady Bluestocking to the hilt and so frightened her suitors that they’d cut and run. She’d had to do it--marriage to any of them would have meant disaster. She’d known it then, and she knew it now.
    Hesperus had halted. Looking up, she saw that he stood outside the wall of a ruin. From the lay of it, it could be what was left of an abbey. She couldn’t be sure.
    In any event there was a quiet grace about the place. Tendrils of ivy crept over the tumbled stone, harbingers of spring, opening green buds to the sun.
    Psyche sighed. Just a few weeks remained to prepare for the Season. But could she undertake such a task? Did she want to go back into the world of the ton? They were not kindhearted, those people who fed on gossip, who lived for the on-dit, the whispered scandal, the ruined reputation.
    She might not be considered bracket-faced yet, but she had to admit she was on the shelf. There was no skirting the fact that she was three and twenty, long past the prime age for marriage. And worse, her reputation as Lady Bluestocking had not been buried. Or, more accurately, it had been resurrected by the Lindens.
    “I had to do it,” she said, scratching behind the gelding’s ears. “I had to protect myself from those creatures Mama pushed on me. I had to create Lady Bluestocking.”
    The horse snorted and tossed his mane. “I know,” she said. “You want a nice run. But I don’t. Not yet at least.” She gazed around. “I believe I’ll just take a look at these ruins. Perhaps the abbey was built on the remains of something Roman.”
    She slid down and tethered the horse