Amy Lake Read Online Free Page A

was Claire, all right. Jody’s eyes were more accustomed to the dark and he intercepted her as she almost collided with him.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Nothing. Nothing. Let’s go.”
    He wrapped Claire in a sturdy black cloak and helped her climb the half-wall. Leaping over after her, he caught the eye of a passing hackney driver, and within moments they were sheltered and anonymous inside the cab, on the way back to Jermyn Street.
    * * * *
    Lady Pamela collapsed on her bed in helpless laughter.
    “ Marry you!  You asked her to marry you?”
    “Why not?” said Edward irritably. “She needs a husband, and I want to get those matchmaking mamas off my back. I haven’t been able to attend a single ton event this season without being besieged by one milk-and-water miss after another.”
    “Hmm.”  Pam smoothed the lilac silk of a pillow sham with one hand and looked at him with absorbed curiosity, as if–thought Edward–he were an unusual zoological specimen.
    A worm, perhaps. The earl had the uncomfortable feeling that Lady Pamela hadn’t believed a word he said.
    He tried again. “She looks strong and healthy, and I’ll need an heir eventually. She can stay at Wrensmoor with the children, and I’ll spend my time in London. We’d hardly even need to see each other.”
    For some reason this provoked more howls of laughter from Pam.
    He was certainly having no luck with women this night, thought Edward sourly. First  indifference, now hilarity. He supposed he should be grateful that his mistress–w ho was currently trying to suppress an attack of giggles –wasn’t upset. Any other woman would have gone into paroxysms of jealousy, but Lady Pamela Sinclair possessed a singularly independent mind. Edward had always assumed that she was as likely to give him his congé as vice versa, and at times during the last year he had suspected that they both knew their days together were numbered.
    Lady Pamela was passionate, intelligent and kind–all qualities Edward admired–but the fire that flared between lovers had long been missing between them. Perhaps it had been absent from the start. He had occasionally wondered if this was due to some quality lacking in himself–but the earl was not a self-reflective man by nature. He had not chosen to examine the subject more closely.
    He looked at Pam now, stretched cat-like on the silk and lace of her bed. She had removed her hairpins, and silky tendrils fell around her face in waves of white and gold. She was as beautiful as any woman he had ever known, yet in his mind he was seeing a woman with raven curls, not blonde. He would not be staying with Lady Pamela that night, the earl realized.  Nor, perhaps, any night to come. And he knew that Lady Pam realized it, too.
    * * * *
    Jody was looking at his sister in horror.
    “You slapped him?   He asked you to marry him, and you slapped him?  Why?”
    Claire poked at the fire and was rewarded with a few flames springing back to life. She sat on the bed and combed out her hair, wondering if anything could ever feel as good as her head did after she took out all those hairpins.
    She thought, unaccountably, of the earl’s touch on her lips.
    She had no answer to give her brother. The entire evening had been a disaster. First the desertion of Major Trevor, then Lady Sinclair claiming to know both her and her nonexistent Aunt Sophie, and finally–the Earl of Ketrick. She had no idea why she slapped  him. It was not sensible–and certainly not ladylike–and Claire was experiencing a deep uneasiness about the possible repercussions. If he was a spiteful sort of man–
    But she felt that Lord Tremayne was not. And he had laughed, after all. Nonetheless, Claire wasn’t happy about the night’s events. She had come to London to get married, had spent every scrap of money she could find on a decent address and the accoutrements needed to make a small splash, and when an eligible man offered for her–an earl , for pity’s