Irresistible Read Online Free Page B

days he would have to pay calls at all the right houses, leaving his card and making his presence known. Tomorrow Margaret and John were expected to arrive in town and there would be all the upheaval of getting Georgina and Lavinia ready to face the whirlwind. He would have to be seen with them. He would have to escort them everywhere. He had no intention of neglecting his responsibilities while he engaged in the sort of excesses and debaucheries that had left him feeling curiously dissatisfied two years before. He was Sir Nathaniel Gascoigne, baronet, now. He was a brother and a cousin first and foremost.
    But there would be a few days of relative quiet. He would not, after all, have to accompany the girls to modistes and milliners and shoemakers, and all the rest. He would merely have to pay the bills. He could allow himself some time for personal enjoyment—for rides like this in the park with his friends, for visits to White’s Club and Tattersall’s and the races. For women. His need had been held at bay while he was at Bowood. Now it was not to be denied. In the future, he decided, he must make frequent visits to town. Two years was just too long a time.
    But he had been woolgathering. The two females who had been approaching them on foot for some time, their black-and-white collie dashing about exploring while never losing sight of them, had drawn closer and Eden was whistling under his breath.
    “A diamond of the first water, would you not agree, Nat?” he said quietly. “Now, if one were in the market for a bride ...”
    The younger and taller of the two ladies was indeed both pretty and elegant, and she was finely clad in a high-waisted walking dress of a pale blue color that complemented her very blond hair and fair complexion to perfection. She was also an extremely young lady—probably younger even than Georgina.
    “But one is not, Ede,” he said firmly. “And if one were, one could do better than rob cradles.”
    Eden chuckled.
    But Kenneth was exclaiming loudly enough to be heard by the ladies. “By Jove,” he said heartily, “it is! Just see who it is, fellows.”
    The other three looked more closely at the two ladies. The second one, smaller, older, less elegant, less fashionably clad than her companion, had at first appeared almost invisible beside her. But it was on this second lady that their eyes all finally alighted—and they looked at her with equal astonishment and pleasure.
    “Sophie!” Rex exclaimed. “By all that is wonderful!”
    “Sophie Armitage!” Eden said simultaneously. “Devil take it, but you are a sight for sore eyes.”
    Kenneth swept off his beaver hat and smiled dazzlingly. “What a wonderful pleasure this is, Sophie,” he said.
    “Sophie, my dear.” Nathaniel leaned down from his horse’s back and stretched out his right hand toward her. “This is a pleasant surprise to greet a fellow on his first morning in London in two years. You are looking well.”
    She shook his hand, her handshake as firm as a man‘s, as it always had been, Nathaniel remembered, and smiled at each of them in turn with genuine warmth. “The Four Horsemen,” she said. “And all in company together, looking as handsome and as dashing as ever, just as if three years had not passed. But it is early morning and perhaps I am dreaming.” She was laughing. “Do you see four gentlemen on horseback here, Sarah? Four of the handsomest rogues in England? Or am I imagining them?” But even as she spoke she was busily shaking hands with the other three.
    Dear Sophie. She had been in the Peninsula with them. Her husband had been another comrade of theirs, and she had traveled everywhere with him, tougher, more resilient than most of the men. She had quietly looked after her husband’s needs and had taken all his fellow officers under her wing too, tending wounds, mending tears in uniforms, brushing out stains, sewing buttons back on even though there had been valets and batmen enough to perform