A June Bride Read Online Free Page A

little sister, her expression demanding an immediate answer.
    “Emmeline, you know Geoffrey…” Alessandra said, her voice a mixture of shyness and a funny kind of pride as she added, “My betrothed.”
    “So then!” Emmeline cried in her resonant fashion as she frowned, then smiled, and proceeded to hug them both at once.
     

Chapter 3
     
    “Father. Elias,” Geoffrey said over the dinner table. Their plates were satisfactorily empty, but Geoffrey’s plate was still full, however pushed about the food had been. They looked at him as he spoke, their mutually steely gray eyes (so appropriate in his sober father and so unsuitable for lighthearted Elias) now half-sleepy over the pleasant repast they had just enjoyed.
    Geoffrey cleared his throat, and seeing he had even managed to attract the butler’s attention, waved the fellow out. When the servant was gone, he went on, “I have something I must tell you. I do hope you will not be unduly upset, and you will be aware that the situation was not precisely of my making.”
    Elias set down his wineglass and regarded his older brother with any sleepiness erased.
    “I became betrothed today,” Geoffrey said, his chin buried into his cravat. Without looking up, he hastily added, “but not to Jacqueline Bremcott.”
    His father, Roderick Darringforth, the second earl of Chenmarth, choked on his wine and coughed for a full minute before he recovered himself.
    Elias looked to his brother, his father’s purple face, then to Geoffrey again, his eyes filled with animation. “I say, that is unexpected. And not unwelcome news,” he ventured, watching his brother’s face. Elias had never thought much of Miss Bremcott.
    “Who? Who is the girl?” their father demanded sharply as soon as he could speak.
    “She is…,” Geoffrey found himself floundering for a moment, but her name came back to him after only a moment, “…Miss Alessandra Hamilton.”
    “Warring's youngest girl?” his father asked, sitting back with a furrowed brow, a finger coming up to rub along the side of his nose.
    “Little Lessie Hamilton?” Elias hooted, slapping the table delightedly with one hand.
    “She is not so little now. Eighteen...or so I would venture a guess,” Geoffrey grumbled, still not wanting to meet their eyes, least of all his carefree, careless brother’s.
    The room fell silent, and Geoffrey was just on the verge of rising from his chair to make an escape, when his father leaned forward on his elbows, his chin coming to rest on his intertwined fingers. He said in his sternest paternal voice, “All right then, Master Geoffrey. We all, including you I believe I may say, thought to see you one day offer for Jacqueline. This sudden engagement to Alessandra is too unexpected to not have a tale behind it. We’ll have the whole of that tale out of you, if you please.”
    Without yesterday’s constant interruptions and heightened dramatics that had occurred at Alessandra’s home, the story of the torn gown was soon retold. He could see by their expressions that Elias was pleased and vastly amused, but a glance at his father showed him Lord Chenmarth was less in charity over the matter.
    “Well! I can only imagine what Lady Bremcott will have to say to this.” Lord Chenmarth said with an anticipatory shudder of having to meet with the woman. “After all, there has been an understanding for these ages past.”
    “That is not precisely true, Father. You and Lord Bremcott had an understanding, and he passed away years ago, and nary a word has been said since. I might add, that understanding was made when Jackie and I were only babes.” At his father’s openly skeptical look, Geoffrey sat up straight in his chair, using his hands for emphasis as he went on, “Yes, it was assumed we would eventually make a pact of it one day, but you will recall Jacqueline made her debut last year. She told me herself she’d had three very serious suitors other than me. I fully anticipated she