Eloisa James Read Online Free

paper), and many of them were of Lily, too.
    Mostly, Colin didn’t write back, but when he did, he always thanked her, and he always asked what Lily had got up to lately.
    By two years later, Colin hadn’t managed to return to England, but Grace was still writing to him twice a month.
    Both families got used to asking Grace how Colin was doing, and after a while she began forwarding his letters to Sir Griffin and Lady Barry. Colin was not communicative, it seemed. The occasional letters he sent to Grace were the only ones he wrote at all.
    “He has a best friend,” she told them all one December. “His name is Philip Drummond and he’s a lieutenant as well. Colin says that Philip is a better sailor than he is.”
    And the following August: “He and Philip are assigned to the West Africa Squadron. Their ship is trying to protect people from being stolen from Africa. He says slavers fight like demons when they’re caught.”
    “He’s a chip off the old block,” her father said, smiling at Sir Griffin and raising his glass. “You raised a good man, Coz.”
    But Grace remembered how much Colin hated fighting, and didn’t care whether Colin was good or not; she just wished he could come home.

 
    Four
    August 1834
    On the way to Arbor House
    F red snorted. “If you don’t fall for Lily, you’ll be the only man for miles around who hasn’t.”
    “She can’t be sixteen,” Colin said, raising an eyebrow.
    “She’s fifteen, the same as I am. She was swanning about Bath in July, flirting with anyone in breeches.”
    “Are you hoping she’ll wait for you?”
    Fred scowled. “She’s still a horror, if you ask me. I like Grace better, but she’s older than me.”
    The sun slanting low through the carriage windows caught Fred’s cheekbones and his wildly curling hair, and Colin thought that his brother—especially after he grew into his ears—would be as likely to cause swooning as Lily.
    Not that Fred cared. He wanted to be an astronomer, and because their parents were quite unconventional in insisting their children learn more than how to dance a reel, Fred spent his time studying planetary motions and the like.
    “So what else has changed at home?” Colin asked, settling back into his corner of the carriage. He felt a bone-deep sense of happiness at the idea of spending a few days at Arbor House.
    “Nothing,” Fred said, turning a page. “Alastair made a fool of himself over Lily in December, not that she paid him any mind. He’s had a hopeless infatuation for years now. It was embarrassing to watch.”
    “I find the idea of Lily as a heartbreaker extremely hard to imagine,” Colin said.
    “She’s the biggest flirt in five counties, that’s what Father says. Though he likes her.”
    “He does?”
    “Everyone does.” Fred thought about it for a moment and then offered, “I think because she’s so pretty, but at the same time, she makes you feel comfortable to be talking to her.”
    “A very wise assessment. Is that enough to make every young man in her vicinity fall in love?”
    Fred rolled his eyes. “She’s the daughter of a duke; everyone knows she has pots of pirate gold for her dowry; and she’s bigger in the front than most girls her age.”
    “That would do it.”
    “She’ll love you. She’s up for a challenge.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Just that. At an assembly, she likes to line up all the eligible men and knock them down like ninepins. You weren’t around this year, so she hasn’t knocked you over yet. I’d say that you’ll be desperately in love with her by the end of the first day.”
    “Why should I be at risk, since you aren’t?”
    “It depends on whether you remember what she’s really like. I shall never forget.”
    “And that is?”
    “Horrid. Frogspawn horrid.”
    Colin nodded. “She might well have changed, though.”
    “You never know who you’re really talking to,” Fred said darkly. “You wait. Lily looks as sweet as pie. But underneath?