A Most Sinful Proposal by Sara Bennett Read Free Book Online

scattered, sold.”
    She was silent, taking it in, and he watched her curiously. If she and George were really as one then she would stand now and excuse herself and leave them to it. The quest would hold no interest for her whatsoever.
    Her dark eyes lifted to his and they were full of brilliant intelligence; Valentine had to remind himself very sternly that he had promised not to touch her.
    “But…what makes this particular rose special? Why is it so sought after?”
    She was interested. She wanted to understand. There was nothing more exciting to Valentine than a woman with an inquiring mind, especially when she was inquiring about his favorite subject.
    “Let me explain, Miss Rotherhild. Until very recently all the roses we grew in England were summer or spring flowering—that is, they only flowered once a year. The Crusader’s Rose flowered several times throughout the spring, summer and autumn, a truly remarkable feat in Medieval times. And its color was very different from the white and pink colorings we were used to. The Crusader’s Rose was golden orange—in fact, de Fevre claimed the hue reminded him of the sun setting over Jerusalem.”
    There was a glow in her eyes. “Oh,” she murmured, her lips curving up at the corners, clearly enthralled with the picture he’d painted. Then, as if suddenly realizing she was showing interest in something she’d claimed bored her, her face wentblank. When she spoke again her voice was carefully devoid of enthusiasm.
    “But this is supposition on your part, is it not? You never actually saw the rose yourself? Not if it was destroyed in 1735?”
    “No. But there are plenty of statements to back up the story. People came from far and wide to admire the rose. That was the reason my ancestor destroyed it. He claimed he was tired of strangers trespassing in his garden, and after a party of gentlemen from France appeared outside his library window and began exclaiming over the beauty of the rose, he decided enough was enough. He ordered the rose be dug out and burned, and any seedlings similarly destroyed. No one dared disobey him—he wasn’t a very pleasant man—and when it was done everyone believed that was the end of the Crusader’s Rose.”
    “Except it wasn’t.” Jasper was leaning forward as if he was hearing the story for the first time.
    “When my father was a boy a manuscript turned up at an antiquarian bookseller’s in London. It was incomplete and my father was certain it had once belonged to the de Fevre collection in our library. Historians concluded the manuscript was part of a larger document which told the story of de Fevre and his companions, but the important thing is, it mentioned the fact that there were two roses. Unfortunately, although it spoke about de Fevre handing one of his companions the other rose as a thank-you for saving his life, the name of that companion was completely illegible.
    “That find inspired my father to begin his search for the rose, a search I have since carried on. Whenmy father died I made a promise that I would do everything in my power to find it.”
    The spark of interest was back in Marissa’s face.
    “Kent is on a mission to restore the Crusader’s Rose to its rightful place at Abbey Thorne Manor,” Jasper said.
    Marissa blinked. “You sound like my father when he’s on the hunt for some rare specimen,” she said with a grimace. “I’m afraid botanical missions are of no interest to me.”
    And yet even as she spoke she was leaning forward to inspect the list of names, a crease between her brows.
    “What do you intend to do now that you have found the names? Visit each house and search their gardens?”
    “That is my plan, yes,” he said stiffly.
    “Then I’m sorry to lack enthusiasm for your plan, Lord Kent, but what if the house is gone, fallen down, pulled down? What if the family moved far away and took the rose with them? What if—”
    He interrupted her impatiently. “My family still