What A Rogue Wants Read Online Free Page B

Madelaine’s tongue to offer Constance
coin, but then Madelaine remembered she now had no coin to offer.
It was all due to Lady Grace. This was awful.
    She pasted a sweet smile
on her face, though she felt like screaming. “If you did happen to
overhear anything, I hope you know how grateful I’d be, how willing to help
you it would make me, if you kept your silence.”
    Constance cleared her throat. “I
didn’t hear a thing, my lady.”
    Madelaine clenched her fist.
Falsehoods. This entire Court was filled with people who had been
raised to lie.
    The all too familiar sting of hurt
pierced Madelaine’s heart. She had to get out of here before she
became someone she did not recognize in an effort to simply defend
herself from those around her. The problem was she had to have an
offer of marriage before her father would allow her to leave the
Court, and as far as she could tell the men at Court with their
freely roaming hands and whispered innuendos wanted a whore―not a
wife.

After a week of being locked up in the
castle because of constant rain and bitter cold, Madelaine was
giddy when she awoke on the seventh day to sun and warmer
temperatures. Neither the queen’s glare nor Grace’s continuing
campaign to make Madelaine look foolish in front of the queen could
dampen Madelaine’s spirits today. They were to spend time outside
and the promise of riding her horse, though it would not be as fast
as she liked, lightened her heart and added a bounce to her
step.
    As she raced down the stairs to meet
the queen and the other ladies-in-waiting she found Grace at the
bottom of the steps.
    “ You’re dressed rather
oddly for sketching,” Grace said.
    Madelaine’s spirits plummeted. “Are we
no longer riding?”
    “ Did I forget to tell you
of the queen’s change of mind?” A wicked smile flittered across
Grace’s face. “You better hurry if you don’t want to anger the
queen by being tardy.”
    Madelaine wanted to throttle Grace,
but unfortunately that would have to wait. She raced up the stairs
and quickly changed while categorizing the different ways she’d
like to take her revenge on Grace. By the time she returned to the
courtyard, she had ten solid retaliation methods in mind, and she
would have gladly employed method one, pushing Grace into the
fountain when no one was watching, but the queen and all the ladies
had already gone outside.
    Fuming, she trudged in the
direction the guard pointed her, kicking stray pebbles as she
walked. Why had she fought her mother so? If only she’d paid
attention and learned how to do at least one thing normal ladies did. Her
mother had been right―Madelaine was willful and her father was too
soft. A reluctant smile tugged at her mouth. How easy it had always
been to get Father to take her side. A few well-placed tears and
she would be practicing archery with him instead of inside with her
mother trying to master embroidery. A gentle reminder about how
long he had been gone to see the king, and she could easily escape
practicing pianoforte for the much more pleasurable experience of
racing him on horseback across their wide expanse of land or having
a dagger-throwing contest.
    None of the things she knew how to do
did her any good, just as her mother had always predicted. If only
she had listened, her parents would not have fought over her
behavior and then her mother would be alive. The familiar sting of
tears tickled her nose, but as the queen and the other
ladies-in-waiting came into sight, Madelaine sniffed back the
tears. She’d sooner be stuck with a hot poker than cry in front of
any of them.
    “ How nice of you to join
us, Lady Madelaine,” the queen said.
    “ I’m sorry, Your Majesty.
I had to change out of my riding habit.”
    “ As did everyone else who
was here when I said to be.”
    Madelaine gritted her teeth on her
response while sitting and carefully situating her skirts over her
ankles. Small blades of brittle grass pricked her skin through