The Care and Feeding of Your Captive Earl (What Happens In Scotland Book 3) Read Online Free

several times, struggling to process what he’d just said. “You… what ?”
    “It appears my great uncle has died with no issue. The title would have fallen to my cousin, but it seems he was quite careless with his mortality and found himself on the wrong end of a dueling pistol.” He folded the letter and placed it back in his jacket with a sigh. “He was always tediously melodramatic.”
    “You are an earl now. You don’t sound pleased.”
    “It doesn’t yet seem real.”
    Could things possibly get any more complicated? Now not only was she kidnapping a gentleman, she was kidnapping an earl.
    Capital.
    Glancing down at her hands, she realized she still held the mug. “Oh! I brought you something warm to drink.”
    He stared at her blankly. “Thank you, I am not thirsty.”
    Drat!
    Gwen pushed out her bottom lip in a feigned pout. “I had it especially made for you. Might as well drink it while we’re waiting for Evelyn to arrive.” She held it out to him. “Come now, it will do you good.”
    His handsome face scrunched in annoyance. Taking the drink, he tipped his head back…
    “Oh!” She lurched forward. “No, no, not that quickly—” But it was too late. He’d already swallowed the entire contents. He handed the mug back to her.
    She peered into the now-empty mug and prayed Matthias hadn’t drunk the sleeping tonic too quickly. The apothecary had warned Gwen of the tonic’s potency, had she not?
    Seconds later, Matthias smiled at her—that beautiful smile that had enslaved every woman in London between the ages of fourteen and forty. Including her. “You were quite right, Gwen. That toddy…” His large, muscular body began leaning to the right. “…was just the thing.”
    Oh, dear God. He was going to topple over. Opening the carriage door, she shoved him inside, following after him. She settled into the seat across from him.
    “How are you feeling?”
    “I’m…feeling…excellent…” Each word was drawn out languidly. He smiled, and then his eyes narrowed in focus. “But the question is, how are you feeling?”
    Oh, dear. Perhaps she’d given him too much.
    “I am well, thank you…” She drew in a breath. “Wait here a moment, will you?”
    He nodded, and then leaned back against the squabs—closing his eyes. “Bring me another toddy, if you would be so kind...”
    “Yes, of course.” She opened the carriage door and stepped outside. The driver was sitting atop the carriage, waiting for instruction to depart.
    “Hello,” she whispered harshly, lest Matthias hear her from inside the carriage. “Driver.” His focus turned her way, and he smiled, tipping his hat. “We will not be going to London, after all. Please take us in the opposite direction, to the most remote hamlet you know of.”
    He lifted a brow skeptically. “Mr. Smith was quite insistent on London.”
    “Yes, there’s been a change of plans. Mr. Smith is…indisposed at the moment, but he has asked me to inform you of the change.”
    Fear twisted in her stomach. If he refused, her plan would fall apart. Happily, in the end, he shrugged and reached for the reins. “It’s no matter to me either way.”
    Relief washed over her. “Excellent. Thank you.”
    Climbing back into the carriage, she rapped on the roof and the rig jolted sharply into motion—tossing her back against the squabs.
    Matthias lifted his head and smiled at Gwen. “Alone again,” he drawled in that husky, darkly seductive tone.
    She and Matthias had been acquainted precisely three years, twenty-one days and some odd hours…not that she’d been counting. In all that time, she’d known him to be a dissolute rake—setting his sights on a different actress or widow every week. Some men drank, some gambled…but nothing seemed to please Matthias more than women. And they, it seemed, were more than happy to entertain his every whim.
    But after that first moment at the fountain, never had his rakish gaze drifted to her . Not that she had