His Sinful Secret Read Online Free

but what she hadn’t expected was the change of identity of her bridegroom. If Harry had lived, she wouldn’t be so nervous.
    Harry. With his easygoing smile and teasing manner . . .
    A soft knock startled her out of her reverie. “Yes?”
    The door opened and a male voice drawled, “Still awake? I saw the light under the door. What on earth are you doing up at this hour?”
    “I might ask you the same thing,” she said dryly as her older brother strolled in. The strong odor of brandy and tobacco came with him, and he’d removed his cravat sometime during the evening. A little disheveled and coming in so late. It wasn’t hard to guess what he’d been doing. As usual the discrepancies between how females were constantly chaperoned and how males could do as they pleased struck her. She said tartly, “At least I’m ready for bed and in my dressing gown, not just stumbling in.”
    “I didn’t stumble.”
    “You’ve sobered up a little, then.”
    “Maybe,” he agreed in rueful honesty, running his fingers through his hair, a slight frown on his handsome face. “I lost track of time playing cards, and yes, there were a few glasses of brandy involved. What’s your excuse for not being sound asleep?”
    “Just . . . thinking.”
    “Ah. Wedding jitters?” Malcolm selected a silk-covered chair and dropped into it, looking a little ridiculous in dark evening clothes superimposed over the feminine, peach upholstery. “I saw Longhaven earlier tonight at our club. He seemed perfectly calm, as usual. No nerves at all, or if he has them, he doesn’t show it.”
    She wasn’t sure calm was the right term to apply to her fiancé. Calm was too simple. Controlled might work better. Something about him spoke of leashed intensity and the smooth, almost neutral exterior somehow enhanced the impression.
    “Good for him,” she muttered with a small sigh. “I admit I wish we weren’t virtual strangers. At least I knew Harry.”
    “He was a good sort.” Regret colored the comment. “Damned shame.”
    Malcolm wasn’t entirely sober or he wouldn’t have sworn in front of her, but she agreed with her brother’s sentiment, if not the language.
    Yes, his death had been a shame. A fluke, an anomaly that at the age of twenty-seven an apparently otherwise healthy young man would complain of pains in his chest and be dead just hours later. His parents, the Duke and Duchess of Southbrook, had been devastated. Immediately they’d sent word to their youngest son, at the time on the Peninsula fighting the French, begging him to come home. It was difficult to say if he would have dutifully resigned his commission and returned to England or not, but the war decided it for him, finally coming to an end.
    So Michael Hepburn had come home to take his older brother’s place. To take his title, his position as heir to a dukedom, and his fiancée. Their parents still insisted on the match. The engagement between her and Harry hadn’t yet been officially announced before he died, and the marriage contracted was between Julianne and the Marquess of Longhaven, so the official documents didn’t even need to be changed.
    Julianne had argued with her father that the five years the younger Hepburn son had spent in Spain meant they didn’t know each other at all—she’d been all of thirteen when he left, so she’d barely known him anyway—but for whatever unfathomable reason, the new Lord Longhaven had agreed to an engagement when the proper mourning period had been observed.
    She’d been thoroughly overruled.
    Harry’s death had been well over a year ago, and Michael had been back in England for some time now, but she really didn’t know him any better than before his return. Polite but distant, charming but enigmatic, he was still a stranger.
    “Yes, it was a shame,” she agreed with genuine grief, remembering the genial young man she’d always thought she’d marry. The two brothers looked similar, with the same lean build,