The Wild One Read Online Free Page A

… how
could I not have known?
    Her back to the commotion behind her, she
drew several deep breaths, stared blankly into the darkness for a
moment, then shut her eyes in a silent prayer for strength. Finally
she rejoined the others, where she reclaimed Charlotte and
retrieved her miniature from the highwayman's leather bag. Perry
took her arm; at his insistence, she climbed into the coach to ride
along with Lord Gareth.
    Wrapping Charlotte in a blanket, she wedged
herself into one corner of the small back seat, set the baby
beneath her elbow, and reached for the injured man as his friends
brought him in after her. Nobody noticed how her hands shook.
Nobody noticed how her entire body shook. They settled him
on her seat, positioning him so that his head and shoulders lay
cradled in her lap, his eyes, glazed with pain, gazing up at her.
And then the door was shut, Perry climbed up on the box, and the
coach shot past the worried faces beyond the window as Perry sent
the team off with a shout and a crack of the whip.
    Charles's brother.
    His weight was warm and heavy and solid. She
averted her gaze from his and found she could not speak.
    Not yet.
    And as the vehicle raced through the lonely
English night, Juliet leaned her cheek against the cold window and
let her thoughts drift back in time ... back to that cold winter
day in Boston when she'd first seen Captain Lord Charles de
Montforte.
    He had been the stuff of a young woman's
dreams.
    The memory was as near as if it had all
happened yesterday….
    ~~~~
    She was minding the counter in her
stepfather's store, stuffing logs in the little stove; outside, the
cold morning air was as brittle as glass. The day was like any
other of late, with rinds of frost on the windowpanes and one or
two customers who still had any money left to spend walking up and
down the wide-planked aisles as they browsed the shelves. And then
she heard it: the steady rattle of musketry, brisk commands, the
ringing clatter of a horse's hooves over frozen, crusty
cobbles.
    A flash of scarlet passed just outside.
Tossing the last log into the stove, Juliet rushed to the window
and, with the heel of her hand, cleared a spot in the frosty pane.
And there he was, sitting high atop his horse, his coattails
splayed over the animal's powerful brown haunches, his fair hair
queued with a black bow beneath his tricorn — a King's officer,
capable and dashing, reviewing his troops on Boston Common.
    Her hand went to her suddenly fluttering
heart. She'd thought a handsome man in uniform was just that — a
handsome man in a uniform — but this one was different. His red
tunic stood out against the fresh snow like the plumage of a
cardinal, and even from a distance of some fifty feet she could see
that he was well-bred, untarnished, something special. Back as
straight as a steeple. White-gloved hands firm but gentle on the
reins. A man above squalor, above indecency, above common, everyday
things. From the elegance of his leather smallclothes to the sword
at his thigh, from the whiteness of his breeches to the glossy
mirror of his boots, he'd been a gentleman. A god. She couldn't
have cared less whether he was a soldier or a colonial. She
couldn't have cared less about anything. She had fallen in love.
Right then, and right there....
    "Fancy that, the troops parading in our
common as though they own the place. Pompous asses! Despicable
louts!"
    Old Widow Murdock, one of the customers in
the store that morning, saw immediately what had caught Juliet's
interest.
    "Yes...."
    "Juliet? I'd like a half-dozen eggs. Mind
you give me the brown ones, not the white this time. And no cracked
shells, ye hear? Juliet! Are you listening to me? Juliet! ...."
    ~~~~
    The coach hit a bump, jarring her rudely
back to the present. Juliet closed her eyes, desperately trying to
hold on to the memory, that sweet, sweet memory, but it faded back
into the murky arms of time and she was once again in England —
three thousand miles from home,