No Marriage of Convenience Read Online Free

look from her protector. The man’s features were unholy indeed, sharp boned and fierce, not unlike those of some of the infidel warriors Mason had read about in his studies of the Crusades. Like his twelfth-century predecessors, this man looked as though he would enjoy gutting everyone in the room just for the sword practice.
    Mason glanced back at the woman, who’d stopped a few feet in front of his desk.
    She inclined her head politely. Her perfume, an enticing concoction, wafted toward him.
    Try as he could to discern her expression, he found most of her features were artfully hidden under the wide brim of her hat. He could see her face was made up, butwhere other women might use such devices to hide flaws, he could see her layers only attempted to hide the perfection beneath.
    The powders and paints did little to conceal the fullness of her lips, the gentle curve of her cheeks and finally the mysterious languid pools of her green eyes as she stole a glance at him.
    Before he could stutter out a greeting, she turned to her companion and held out her hand. The man bowed and with great precision and ceremony drew a familiar-looking blue packet of papers from within his tunic and handed them to his mistress.
    Mason knew exactly what that meant. Those blue papers could only be one thing—warrants of collection.
    He’d obviously underestimated the local creditors.
    They’d taken to hiring women to dun their more recalcitrant debtors.
    He was loath to confess it but he should be congratulating them. She was enough to entice a man to give her anything and everything he possessed.
    Her companion came to stand behind her, his legs spread in a wide stance, his posture like a rod of iron, his arms crossed over his chest.
    One hand, Mason noted, rested idly on the hilt of his blade. Apparently if she failed, her warrior friend added his own form of persuasion to the transaction.
    He turned his attention back to the intriguing woman before him and tried to put on the blandest expression he could muster.
    “Uh, will you have a seat?” he asked, waving at a chair. The lady smiled toward Cousin Felicity, who, Mason noted wryly, had reclaimed her place on the settee and was searching frantically through her embroidery basket.
    More than likely looking for her spectacles, he wagered silently.
    “Thank you,” the lady murmured, as she perched on the edge of the chair.
    Mason sat as well, relieved to have the support of Freddie’s solid and expensive furniture.
    She shifted slightly, and raised her head, the plumes in her hat fluttering back and forth above the brim as she revealed her emerald gaze to him.
    A shade of green so clear, Mason knew he would never forget it.
    Like the verdant blush of the Christ Church meadow on an April morning, like a—
    He stopped himself from waxing any further into poetics. Why, he never indulged in such fanciful thoughts and he could only cringe at what had possessed him now—probably the last vestiges of Freddie’s unwanted influence haunting the room.
    Then again, perhaps he should have listened to Frederick a little more often. His brother would have known what to say…
    Though that innate knowledge of witty forte, Mason reminded himself, was what had gotten the Ashlins in this predicament in the first place.
    He resorted to cool indifference. “May I help you?”
    The lady smiled, a winsome pretty gesture that almost unraveled Mason’s resolve.
    “Why, yes,” she said. “Though I have a rather personal matter to discuss with you, my lord and you alone.” She inclined her head ever so slightly toward Cousin Felicity.
    A personal matter .
    Those three words tossed all his musings aside in an icy dash of reality.
    Oh, she was a bill collector, of a sort. More likely, shehad come for the rents owing on her town house and her unpaid millinery bills. Just like the others.
    The angelic lady could be nothing less than another of his brother’s mistresses. Yet even as he came to this logical