The Unintended Bride Read Online Free Page A

Hero.
    He remembered with a rush how interesting it was to have the Misses Fenster in residence. One never knew what to expect from most of them — except Hero, of course, who was always steady, sensible, and sweet. Except when she was frowning at him, as she was now.
    "I see, Miss Fenster, that you have found a new suitor in the time I kept you waiting," Wyndham said from the doorway.
    Arthur turned, and bowed slightly to the handsome young blood scowling at him. Would Juliet ever learn, he wondered with exasperated amusement. "You have it wrong, Wyndham. The lady was simply using me as a pair of ears to hear of her great admiration for you. She tells me she thinks of you with Excalibur in your hand."
    He heard Hero choke back a laugh, disguising it badly as a cough, and he was certain without looking that Juliet's gaze upon his back would be sharp enough to cut glass. Still, he felt the most heartless flirt of all the Fenster sisters deserved a little of her own medicine back. "She has been waiting for you with bated breath, Wyndham. I hope you have a good excuse for making her suffer so?"
    Wyndham, being the young peacock he looked, beamed at the idea that Juliet had been extolling his virtues while she paced the floor awaiting his entrance, and swallowed the improbable fiction whole.
    His eyes softened as he turned to Juliet and took her hand. "I do apologize for my tardiness, Miss Fenster. My carriage awaits, if you will forgive me and still consent to go for a drive with me?"
    Juliet tilted her head coyly, as if she were contemplating her answer. With a wicked glance at Hero, however, she nodded, and said softly, "I'm certain my sister and Mr. Watterly have as great a desire as I do to finish our most recent conversation about Excalibur. And frogs that need kissing by princesses." Juliet did not meet Hero's glare, instead staring meltingly into Wyndham's besotted eyes. "But I must allow you to make amends to me for your tardiness, mustn't I?" She glanced at Arthur with a wicked gleam. "So I will gladly leave them to it. Alone."
    Arthur watched numbly, feeling trapped as she called for her maid and her cloak, all the while merrily chatting and throwing pleased glances between her sister and Arthur. The girl knew. She knew how he felt about Hero. No. She couldn't. She was simply being Juliet. A tease. A flirt. A mischievous sprite. Wasn't she?
    As she danced out the door, chatting excitedly to Wyndham, he was too cowardly to turn toward Hero and examine the expression on her face. If she knew how he felt, he could not bear it. It was one thing to love her quietly, from a distance. To have her know this would be like tearing open a barely healed wound.
    But she was not the coward he was, it seemed. Her voice was soft but her question sharp as she asked, "I'm sorry about Juliet's teasing, but you must admit you deserved it. Why were you so rude to Mr. Digby? He has never been anything but a good friend to me. Has he done something to you in the past that you should hold him in so little esteem?"
    Nothing but win her heart. He pressed his lips together firmly and turned around. He should take his cue from her courage and face her. Tell her Digby was a good man. Would make a fine husband. And yet his thoughts were jumbled by visions of Hero kissing a frog. Kissing Digby. Kissing Arthur himself.
    To his great relief, Miranda, the duchess, appeared like a whirlwind in the room, holding out her arms to him as if he were her brother, not her husband's cousin. "So good to see you. Why didn't you let me know you were coming? I could have had Cook get in some of those mushrooms you like so well."
    He laughed at her little joke, perhaps a bit too loudly, as he banished all thought of kissing Hero Fenster into the deepest part of his mind. He was not at all fond of mushrooms since he had nearly been poisoned to death by them four years earlier. In his relief at being rescued from his fate, he embraced her more warmly than usual, for