Taming the Barbarian Read Online Free

laughing, its pitted eyes rolled up to watch her approach. The stallion all but quivered on the brink of release. And the warrior… Dear Lord, the warrior… Reaching up, she touched his solid arm. It still held the heat of the sinking sun. She smoothed her fingertips along the corded muscle. “I doubt any would part with such a piece,” she breathed, but even as she said the words, she imaged him in her own gardens, imagined him watching over her at night, shielding her from the world beyond her windows. “He would not be easily replaced. Indeed,” she added, skimming along his massive forearm to his hand, fisted tight about his etched sword, “I doubt if there is another like him in all the world.”
    A dove crooned at the oncoming night, but the old man remained silent. She pried her gaze from the Celt. “Don’t you agree?” she asked, but when she turned, the old man was nowhere to be seen. “Sir. Sir?” she said. Nothing answered but the sound of the wind in the nearby willow. Its trailing branches waved gently as if moved by unseen hands.
    She tightened her grip on the Celt’s fingers. They were as solid as forever, as unyielding as the earth beneath her feet, and for a moment, for one brief lapse of time, she felt truly safe.
    But someone giggled from a path nearby, snapping her from her reverie. Feeling girlishly foolish, she pulled her hand from the Celt’s hewn grip and slipped unnoticed from the garden.

Chapter 3
     
    “L ady Glendowne.” Mr. Finnegan bowed over her hand, squeezing her fingers and placing a sloppy kiss somewhere in the vicinity of her knuckles. “You look absolutely bedazzled this evening.”
    She could only assume he meant dazzling, for despite the mind-boggling amount of work and the nightmares that had plagued her since her return from Paris, she herself had thought she’d looked quite fetching when first she’d seen her reflection in her bedchamber mirror. Her gown was made of salmon brocade, beribboned at the hem and laced tight below her bosom. Tessa had used her magical skills to sweep her hair into an intricate coiffure embedded with faux pearls. Small ringlets cascaded to her breasts, which, though humble in stature, had been persuaded by somewhat deceitful means to reside just below her chin.
    She looked quite charming, Fleurette admitted silently. And she wanted nothing more than to return home and toss the entire ensemble into the cook fire.
    “Thank you,” she said instead, and, smiling prettily, pulled her fingers firmly from his grip. Mr. Finnegan was short, as round as a turnip, and married to a woman who could wither an adversary with one glance. He was also sloppy drunk. “You look enchantingly besotted yourself.”
    He beamed at her. “You’ve noticed.”
    ” ‘Twould be impossible not to.”
    “You’re too kind,” he said, and staggered a little. He was sweating like a draught horse, but he owned a small fleet of ships that regularly carried Fleur’s coveted carriages across the Channel and beyond.
    Shortly after Thomas’s death, Fleurette had sold off everything but Briarburn’s floor tiles and bought a floundering company. Eddings Carriages, as it was now called, was, to date, her greatest success. “Have you lost weight as well?” she asked.
    “A bit perhaps.” Finnegan patted his expansive belly. “One has got to watch his figure, or the maids will surely not, aye? Why just last week I—”
    His voice droned on like a pesky insect. Fleurette smiled, glanced up, and caught Stanford’s attention from across the room. The slightest widening of her eyes had him easing away from Deacon to come to her aid.
    “Lady Glendowne,” he said, and bowed elegantly at the waist. His hair glowed like autumn wheat in the bevy of candles that graced the width of the ballroom. “I have been searching for you all this long evening.”
    “Truly?” She feigned surprise, “My apologies. Had I known, I would have sought you out straightaway. Please excuse