An Unsuitable Bride Read Online Free

it to you at some point. But at present, my employer is expecting me at the whist tables.” She moved away to the double doors to the salon.
    There was something puzzling about the lady, Peregrinereflected. Something slightly off kilter, but it was none of his business. He followed Marcus into the salon.
    “Lady Douglas, may I present my houseguest, the Honorable Peregrine Sullivan?” Marcus bowed over the hand of an angular woman in a saque gown of magenta silk that hung from her thin frame as if from a coat hanger. Her décolletage revealed an expanse of sallow freckled skin, and her pale red hair was dressed in an elaborate coiffure of frizzed curls on her brow and tight ringlets curling to her sharp bare shoulders.
    She greeted Peregrine’s bow with a nodded curtsy, subjecting him to a scrutiny that seemed to find him wanting. “Mr. Sullivan. You are welcome, I’m sure,” she murmured with a distant twitch of her lips that Peregrine thought could have been a smile with sufficient imagination.
    “An honor, Lady Douglas,” he responded with impeccable courtesy.
    Sir Stephen Douglas was a tall, well-built man of florid complexion. His belly pushed against the silver buttons of his striped waistcoat, and the seams of his green damask breeches strained against the fullness of his thighs.
    A sportsman who was also a little too fond of the pleasures of the table and the decanter, Perry guessed, bowing as he greeted his host. In his late middle years, he would run to seed. It was an uncharitablereflection, but something about the man put his back up, even though he couldn’t pinpoint the cause.
    “The Honorable Peregrine Sullivan, eh? One of the Blackwaters, I believe.” Sir Stephen took snuff as he responded to Peregrine’s bow. “I am slightly acquainted with your brother, the earl. We belong to the same London club. I don’t, however, believe I have met you there.”
    “I’m sure I would have remembered had we met there, sir,” Peregrine responded with a smooth smile. “But I am not overly fond of cards. Blackwater, on the other hand, is quite taken with ’em.”
    “Not overly fond of cards . . . Gad, sir. What gentleman is not fond of cards?” Stephen exclaimed, sneezing snuff into his handkerchief in vigorous punctuation.
    “We are a rare species, Sir Stephen, but you find us in all the best circles,” Peregrine responded with an amiable smile that did nothing to conceal an edge of disdain to his voice. He became aware of a strange sound over his shoulder. A slight choking noise. He turned his head sharply, but only the librarian was close by, and she was plying her fan, gazing into the middle distance.
    “Oh, good . . . good.” Belatedly, it seemed to occur to Stephen that he might have implied that his guest, a scion of the august Blackwater family, somehow lacked gentlemanly attributes. Disconcerted, he blinked and stuffed his handkerchief into the deep pocket of hiscoat. “Well, we have three whist tables set up. Mistress Hathaway has agreed to make a fourth at the third table. I trust you have no objections, Mr. Sullivan.”
    “How could I?” Peregrine asked blandly. “If the lady has no objection to playing with a self-confessed amateur.” He glanced at the librarian with an inquiringly raised eyebrow.
    “Maybe I will not draw you as partner, sir,” the lady murmured from behind her fan. “In which case, I can only be delighted to find myself playing against an amateur.” She moved away to one of the card tables set up on the far side of the salon.
    Peregrine swallowed his surprise at this riposte. His host clearly hadn’t heard the sotto voce response and was busily allocating players to tables. The party divided, and Perry took his place at the third table with a keen-eyed gentleman in a suit of a vivid shade of turquoise and a lady of an uncertain age, dressed in a fashion too youthful for her slightly raddled countenance, the décolletage of her crimson gown revealing too much