To Wed a Rake Read Online Free Page B

suppose that’s a better excuse than some. So why did you offer me all that Spanish coin about your horse and your tailor and the rest?”
    “Because I greatly dislike having my affairs curtailed or arranged due to gossip circulating through the group of ccohe groufoolish people that passes for the
ton
,” he said, and there was steel in his voice.
    “That’s the way of the world,” she said, but she looked into her glass rather than at him. “At any rate, there’s nothing about
habeas corpus
that requires you to make a fool of yourself with French prostitutes.”
    “If you refer to my escort at the opera, Marie is not a prostitute,” Gil said, a little half smile playing on his lips. “She’s a generous woman, that’s all.”
    The countess snorted.
    “I thought she’d distract people’s attention from the rumor that I might marry Mademoiselle Benoit,” he noted.
    “Well, it did that. Now everyone’s wondering which member of the French nation you’ll bring to the Cavendish masquerade.”
    “What costume shall you wear?” he enquired, changing the subject.
    Her eyes snapped at him. “I’m going as Cleopatra,” she said. “And I’ll thank you to go alone, Kerr. I’ve no wish to see you escort yet another light-heeled Frenchwoman and make me hesitate to open my correspondence in the morning. You’ll come alone, and the following day you’ll go to St. Albans and marry Emma,
if
she’ll still have you.”
    “Her refusal is, of course, always a possibility.”
    “Don’t look so damned hopeful about it!” his godmother snapped.

 



Chapter Five

     
    Bethany Lynn was beside herself with anxiety. Her elder sister had, by all appearances, utterly lost her mind, and nothing Bethany said seemed to convince her otherwise. “Kerr will never believe you’re French!” she said desperately. “Everyone says that he did nothing but drink and seduce women when he was in Paris. He’s an
expert
on the subject of Frenchwomen.”
    “Of course I can fool the man,” Emma answered, clearly unperturbed. “I shall pretend I’m with Mama. She never spoke a word of English in the last two years of her life; there were times when I felt I was forgetting my native tongue.”
    “You don’t look in the least French.”
    “Sometimes I feel as if I understand men better than you, for all that you’re married,” Emma said. “My expectation is that if I throw on a French accent, babble a fewphrases, and appear happy to see him, my true nationality will not matter. I’ll make him believe that we first met in Paris.”
    “He’ll never believe that,” Bethany insisted.
    “You just said that Kerr admits to being so routinely drunk that he could have had a clandestine encounter with the Empress Josephine without remembering. What’s more, I know the name his intimates call him. I’ll use it to prove our acquaintance.”
    “What is it?” Bethany asked.
    “Gil. His godmother, the Countess of Bredelbane, wrote me with that bit of information. She writes quite regularly, trying to make up for her godson’s neglect.”
    “I’m not convinced,” Bethany said stubbornly.
    “From what I’ve heard in the village,” Emma answered, knowing that she was about to shock her little sister, “if one wishes to seduce a man, therappe are only two tools that matter: alcohol and a scanty gown. Most of the stories I hear have to do with either a drunken man or a naked woman. Or both.”
    “Who is telling you such things?” Bethany demanded. “You’d think the village women would have more respect for the delicacy of a young lady.”
    Emma snorted. “And if I was so delicate, who would help birth the village babies?”
    Bethany scowled. “You know what I mean.”
    “The point is that if I can’t get Kerr to drink himself into a fever of lust, I’ll simply unclothe myself, and that will do it. By all accounts, a man cannot resist the sight of the undressed female form. Wouldn’t you agree?”
    Suddenly Bethany