Edith Layton Read Online Free

nervous to eat, but Daisy knew how to pretend she was enjoying her luncheon. Years of marriage to a man who wouldn’t put up with disobedience had taught her that much.
    When her heart had slowed to a normal beat after her daring entrance, she sat in the earl’s dining parlor and tried to make polite conversation. They spoke about the earl’s three sons: Christian, son of his body, and the two adopted sons of his heart. They were all recently married, the earl reported, and doing wonderfully well.
    “Marriage was like an epidemic around here last year,” the viscount commented with a theatrical shudder.
    They laughed at the obvious distaste in the viscount’s expression. But Daisy was truly happy for all three young men. She’d liked each of them, and they each in turn had treated her with the same sympathy and courtesy their father did. Now she tried to listen to stories about Christian’s new house, his adopted brother Amyas’s penchant for Cornwall, and the miracle of Daffyd’s settling down at last. But she couldn’t stop sneaking glances around at the room she sat in.
    She’d lived in a fine house when she’d been a child, but she’d never seen anything like the earl’s dining parlor. An elaborate Venetian cut-glass chandelier hung over the dining table, which was set with fresh flowers as well as food. The china plates the food was served on were almost transparent; the glasses looked as though they’d been spun from water; the cutlery was elaborately embossed and pure silver. The walls were covered with patterned stretched green silk; the sunlight that poured in through the long windows made them shimmer. The sideboards and chairs were antique, heavy with age and worth. The footmen were smiling but silent, the food served beautifully. Daisy was awed.
    The gentlemen she dined with matched the splendor of the room. They were both well dressed, charming, and mannerly, more so than any men she’d seen in years.
    This was her long-held dream, realized at last. Daisy was overwhelmed. She was also suddenlyso terrified, she couldn’t eat. She wondered if she hadn’t bitten off more than she could chew, though she could hardly take a bite of food.
    Geoffrey Sauvage, now Earl of Egremont, wasn’t as she’d remembered him.
    She’d remembered a genial, hardworking older man, usually weary, often sad. He’d dressed in the same rough clothing all the men she knew wore, but he’d worn his with a certain casual style. And, she remembered most clearly, he was always clean. He spoke well and softly, and was always kind to her. Most other men had treated her with wary respect because of Tanner and their fear of his anger if they didn’t, because to show no respect to his wife was to insult him. But she’d seen their eyes whenever they thought Tanner wasn’t watching. They’d looked her at with appreciation, greedy lust, and calculation. Geoff had never done that.
    Nor did he look at her that way now. That wasn’t what made her uneasy. It was that he no longer looked sad, or weary, and most of all, now he didn’t look that old anymore. He was still dressed casually, but now in fashionable clothes. He looked prosperous, fit, robust, healthy. She wondered why he was still unmarried. She also wondered how many mistresses he had, and didn’t doubt he probably had at least one. Because now he looked like a man who would and could use a woman, and not just for show.
    That wasn’t what she’d been expecting. Thatwasn’t what she’d traveled halfway across the world to find; it was never what she wanted.
    She didn’t want to be caught staring so she turned her attention to the earl’s guest, and found him watching her. She looked away again, quickly. The viscount was always watching her. But he didn’t eye her with any kind of lust; instead he seemed merely amused and curious. She wondered at his friendship with the earl; the two didn’t seem to have much in common.
    He was years younger than the earl, and