The Marriage Ring Read Online Free Page B

smiled at him as if she’d known what he was thinking.
    “I am not,” Richard said, not liking the word.
    “It’s your reputation.” She shrugged as if helpless to change her opinion. “You are also known as a fine legal mind, although to the dismay of your mentors, you don’t practice law. The Honorable Richard Lynsted,” she said as if reading his name in the air. “Graduated with high honors from Christ Church College and then took your training and study of the law at Lincoln’s Inn. But you turned your back on it. Instead, you manage your father and uncle’s business and to great advantage. You’ve made them very rich and although you keep to yourself, there are those who have noticed your financial acumen. Do you like that word, Mr. Lynsted? Acumen? It means you have a natural gift, an understanding, a perception for something.” She paused and then said softly, “ I have an acumen.”
    She moved toward him. Her bodice barely clung to her left breast. Moments before she’d been modest and tried to keep it up. Now, she didn’t care, and he had a damned time keeping his eyes off that curve of flesh.
    Miss MacEachin stopped in front of him, standing so close their toes touched…and her impudent, immodest, alluring breast was less than an inch from his chest.
    She smiled up at him. “My acumen is that I know men. I’ve always known them from the moment I first started to bud.” She drew a deep breath, the movement lifting her breast and looking down from this angle he could see the edge of her nipple. The scent of roses filled the air.
    “Do you know they say you never laugh?” she asked him, her voice husky. She knew what she was doing. She ridiculed him, but not with words.
    Richard prided himself on his control, but God had also made him a man. The sight brought the blood rushing to his groin—and she knew it.
    With a dismissive laugh, she backed away from him, raising her bodice. Teasing him with not only her body but with her confidence.
    In that moment, Richard could have hated her. He chose not to. Here was his enemy and it would behoove him to look deeper.
    Her manner sobered. “Your father and uncle are guilty. They are too moral, too upright, too unforgiving. That’s the way men are when they are guilty. I also know that they left London decades ago disinherited by their father. The twins had a violent streak that their father would not condone.”
    “You are speaking nonsense,” Richard said.
    Her gaze studied him a moment. “You really don’t know, do you? You should. It would explain society’s attitude towards them.”
    “My father and uncle are very well respected—”
    “What nonsense ,” she declared.
    “There is jealousy because they are so successful—”
    “There is suspicion because of the murder.”
    Richard shook his head, his anger like bile in his throat. “The stable lad’s death was an accident. For decades they’ve lived with those rumors. That’s why they are concerned about your insinuations.”
    “Yes, because they are true ,” she flashed back.
    “You have no proof.”
    “I do!”
    “Then what is it?” he demanded.
    Once again they stood almost toe-to-toe but this time there was no attraction. Only animosity. She could have been stark naked and he wouldn’t have cared.
    “Where did they earn the start of their fortune?” she wondered.
    “They invested.”
    “In what? Ships, funds, businesses?”
    Richard almost laughed. “They invested in the Wind’s Mistress . She was the beginning of our shipping company.”
    “And where, after they’d been cut off from the old duke, did they find money for such an investment? They purchased that ship outright.”
    She had been doing her investigating. But Richard knew the answer. “They started with several small investments until they accrued the funds for the ship.”
    “Is that what they told you?” she asked, her tone insinuating she thought him a fool.
    “Yes.”
    “And I suppose they’ve