Never Marry a Stranger Read Online Free

thinking that marriage meant security, but had found it herself, without needing an actual husband. She’d learned never to rely on anyone else.
    At last she leaned back to look up at him, smiling with happiness, forcing tears to glisten in her eyes. “Matthew!” She repeated his name with gladness and joy.
    He was smiling down at her, which gave her some ease, but he studied her face closely. Should she kiss him, distract him from thinking too deeply? She was fully prepared to do what was necessary, but…something stopped her.
    “They called you Emily,” he said slowly, as if testing out her name on his tongue, his voice a deep rumble of masculinity.
    She grinned as her hands stroked down his shoulders. “I was Emily Grey, but you made me a Leland.” She let her smile fade. “But now I don’t know what to do. I want to show my happiness for your safe return, and cry at the same time. Do you truly remember nothing?”
    He shook his head. “A fine homecoming for a wife who hadn’t allowed herself to hope I would return.”
    His hands slid down her back slowly, coming to rest on her waist. She’d wanted to distract him, but strangely, just his touch was distracting her. And she knew she could not risk such a mental failing.
    “How could I hope?” she asked, fingering his lapels. “They said you were dead. I was ill when your mother told me. Even now I remember how lost I felt. But to you, I am just a newly introduced stranger.” As a tear fell from her lashes, she was grateful for such a mask behind which to hide. Though she was playing with fire, she reached to touch his cheek, feeling the warmth of his skin and roughness of stubble.
    Suddenly, his hands tightened on her waist, pulling her even more intimately against him. His gaze was centered on her mouth.
    He thought she was his wife. He could claim his marital rights.
    She found she couldn’t breathe, her breasts rising and falling against the hard wall of his chest. Though he was not an exceptionally tall man like his cousin the duke, he still leaned over her, powerful and intimidating. If he ever remembered everything—
    He bent even closer, his mouth just above hers. She felt his breath, knew an intense ache that she couldn’t identify. To her surprise, at the last second he turned his head and pressed his warm lips to her cheek. He let her go so quickly that she stumbled back against the bed.
    He caught her arm, his smile charmingly distressed. “I need…time to get to know you again, almost as if we are starting over. I know that isn’t fair to you—”
    “Of course it’s fair,” she said, almost too hastily. She was supposed to be distraught and sad—but she could also be an understanding wife. She took a deep breath, then patted his hand where it still gripped her upper arm. “This is all a shock to me, too.”
    He nodded.
    “We have not seen each other in over a year,” she continued, feeling calmer, stronger. “I find myself wondering how you’ve changed, wondering what you’ve seen and done while in the army.”
    He let her go and stepped back. “My parents said you’d spent six months with me in India.”
    “Until you thought I would be in too much danger if I stayed with you. Do you remember any of that?”
    He slowly shook his head.
    “By the time I returned to England to meet your family, it was only to hear that they’d already had word that you were—dead.” She looked away, inspired to fumble for the handkerchief on her bedside table. She blew her nose.
    When she looked back at him, he was walking toward the desk.
    “I found our marriage license,” he said.
    Her breath halted in her lungs as she waited for him to continue.
    “It’s dated only two days before I left for India. I remember some of the preparations in London, the train journey to Southampton, but not how long I spent there.”
    “Two weeks. It is where we met. I am from a nearby village, where my father was a country squire.”
    “Was?” He sat on