And Then He Kissed Her Read Online Free Page B

of ham. “Then why don’t you marry her?”
    “Harrison, don’t talk with your mouth full,” Antonia ordered as if he were a boy of seven instead of a mature man of thirty-six. “And girls, stop trying to find your brother’s next wife. It only makes him more determined not to find her himself. It’s understandable, I suppose,” she added grudgingly, “that he would be chary of remarrying after that unspeakable American.”
    That unspeakable American was his grandmother’s only way of referring to his former wife. Not that he minded the phrase. He preferred not to speak of Consuelo, either.
    “One bad experience shouldn’t deter you from marrying again,” Phoebe told him.
    “The voice of knowledge,” he said, trying to deflect from the unpleasant subject at hand by teasing her.
    “We just want you to be happy.”
    “I know, Angelface, and I adore you for it.” He leaned over and bussed her cheek with an affectionate kiss. “But marrying again would never make me happy. Trust me on that.”
    “How tactless of you to speak this way, Harry, with my wedding only ten months away.” Diana’s amused voice once again entered the conversation. “Unlike you, I am quite thrilled to be making a second venture into matrimony. Edmund is the most wonderful man I have ever known.”
    Diana’s first marriage had been an unfortunate one, and though her husband had caused her terrible pain with his blatant infidelities, he’d had the good sense to die in a railway accident. Despite the misery she had endured, Diana had never lost her utter faith that love and marriage went hand in hand. Six years after her first husband’s death, she was about to make a second match. Perhaps this time her faith would be justified. For her sake, Harry hoped so, but that didn’t mean he intended to follow her example.
    “You’re a romantic, Diana. Always were.”
    “And my fiancé? Edmund’s past experience with marriage was just like yours, you know. He fell in love with one of those Americans, too, and married her. His divorce was every bit as difficult and painful, but unlike you, he wasn’t made cynical by it.”
    Cynical? Pain shimmered through his chest, a faint echo of what he’d felt the night he’d finally accepted the truth about his wife and their future. The night she’d left him and he’d abandoned any notions of love everlasting that had managed to survive the four hellish years of their life together. “I am not cynical,” he said, lying through his teeth. “I simply see no reason to get married a second time.”
    “No reason?” His grandmother looked up from her meal to stare at him in shocked disapproval. “What about an heir to the estate?”
    “I have an heir. Cousin Gerald.”
    Antonia made a sound of contempt.
    “But Grandmama, he wants the job, anticipates it most eagerly, in fact. Every time he visits Marlowe Park, he counts the silver, asks about the drains, and spends hours interviewing my steward. I should hate to see such exemplary self-education go to waste.”
    Antonia, a bit like the Queen in many ways, was not amused. “Stop talking nonsense, Harrison. You always do that when you wish to avoid an unpleasant subject. You are a viscount. It is your first and only duty to marry well and have sons.”
    Grandmama was well behind the times. She simply could not accept that the landed aristocracy were a stone-broke lot nowadays. Harry had seen the way the wind was blowing years ago. The one thing he could thank Consuelo for was her father, and the valuable lesson old Mr. Estravados had taught him. It was captains of industry, he’d told Harry, not aristocrats, who would wield the money and power in the future. Harry had taken those words to heart, and it had paid off handsomely these past fourteen years. Having entailed estates and sons to inherit them wasn’t the crucial thing it used to be.
    But his mother just had to offer her opinion on the matter. “Harry, you must marry and have sons.