The Substitute Countess Read Online Free Page A

fed.” He watched as she closed her eyes, moved her lips in a silent grace and crossed herself.
    Would religious differences cause a problem with what he had planned? Perhaps he was borrowing stumbling blocks. Or searching for some. Damn, but he hadn’t expected it to be this easy.
    Instead of pursuing his thoughts on that, he watched her eat. She tucked into the meal like a sailor on shore leave after a long voyage. “Didn’t Orencio feed you?” he asked before thinking how it sounded, that she might think he was criticizing her manners.
    She pulled a wry face. “I had little time to eat in peace while I was there. The lads I tended were prone to food fights.”
    “A handful, eh? Tell me about them.” Women loved to talk about themselves, he knew, so he deliberately provided the opportunity. Calculating, the way he had been doing since they met, seemed unnatural to him, but also necessary.
    She talked between bites, alternately grimacing and laughing softly, pointing for emphasis with her fork. He was glad she felt more at ease in his company, but wondered at it. Perhaps it was only an act, he reasoned, a defense to cover her inner fears.
    When they had finished eating, he escorted her upstairs to the chamber adjacent to his own. “Sleep well, little cousin,” he said and raised her hand to kiss the back of it. “I will call you early come morning.”
    “I probably won’t sleep a wink,” she said, withdrawing her hand and staring down at it as if it were a strange object. Her next words were a near whisper. “No matter what we choose to do next, I am glad you came for me. Thank you, Jack. You are truly a godsend.”
    Well, he had never been called that before. He answered with a brief nod and bade her good-night. He wondered if he would sleep. Her calm and trusting nature was making it far too effortless for him to take advantage of her, and guilt was nudging him. Not strongly enough to make him cry off the proposal, though. As he saw it, neither of them had another viable choice. Perhaps she simply recognized that, as well.
    The next morning, Jack noted that her mood had not changed overnight. She smiled up at him as if he were the Second Coming. Her quiet acceptance of the impending voyage made him wonder again if she were pretending away any trepidation.
    At any rate, he was glad to see color in her cheeks and a barely subdued sparkle in those pretty brown eyes. Her features were not that remarkable, rather commonplace when taken individually. Her hair was the color of pale honey, her eyebrows and lashes several shades darker. She had an oval face, pert little nose, bright brown heavily lashed eyes and a sweetly curved and quite mobile mouth. All nice-enough attributes, but it was their combination and her ever-changing expression that lent her beauty.
    Though there was nothing static about those expressions, they generally ranged from sweetly accepting to thoughtfully questioning. She obviously avoided excitement, outright anger or anything approaching hysteria. Why that bothered him, he could not say, except that he had seen the fire in her once and wondered how she kept it banked. He should ask her for lessons.
    He had, of course, noted her lithe figure, too. What man would not do that if in the company of a woman he might marry.
    She was small of stature, a head shorter than he, and not greatly endowed at the top, though her tiny waist made her seem so at first glance.
    He could not seem to dismiss his wonder at her composure. It had to be a natural acquisition from the contemplative sisters who had raised her. Yet underneath that calm, he knew there lurked a more passionate streak in her nature. Hadn’t he glimpsed that at Orencio’s? Righteous anger, that had been, and not what Jack wished to stoke. It was the passion in her that he was looking for, of course.
    Pretense or not, she treated him like her liberator now, so perhaps he really was. It gave him a sense of satisfaction to think so. And it