Before The Scandal by Suzanne Enoch Read Free Book Online Page A

can go no further.”
    Alyse frowned. Evidently she wasn’t the only one with troubles. The realization surprised her a little. “What is your question?”
    His shoulders rose and fell as he took a breath. “Do you know of anything that my brother might find…troubling?”
    “‘Troubling’?” she repeated. “Do you mean something like the Quence east pasture flooding? That happened a fortnight ago. Richard—my cousin—has been helping to put in a new irrigation dam on the creek, since William can’t oversee it himself.”
    “Yes, something like that,” he murmured. “Thank you. If you can think of anything else, please inform me. In fact, may I take you driving tomorrow?”
    That was the second time he’d suggested such an outing. Her heart hammered, but she attempted to ignore it. He only wanted information, and thought she might be able to supply it. “I’ll ask my aunt.”
    He cocked his scarred eyebrow, attractive and dangerous. “Though I’m not looking to be slapped, are you not five-and-twenty? And I can’t remember you ever asking permission to do anything, regardless of your age.”
    She shrugged free of his grip. “As I’m certain you’re aware, things change. And not just for you.”
    Keeping her chin up and her shoulders square, she walked into the bakery. Phin might not know what the past four and a half years of her life had been like, but she wasn’t about to forget. And his abrupt reappearance reminded her of other things she hadn’t forgotten.
    Phin Bromley had always been equal parts trouble and excitement. The last thing she needed was either of those. No matter how handsome the face bringing it, or how fond the memories she had of him.

Chapter 5
    Phineas watched as Alyse Donnelly disappeared into the bakery. Clearly he’d said the wrong thing, but what? Had someone broken her heart, turned her into one of those frightening, man-hating females? That made sense considering her spinsterhood, but it also unsettled him a little.
    When he’d left, she’d been a fresh spring bloom just beginning to blossom. He’d given up any claim to her almost before he’d realized she could be more to him than a dear friend. Seeing her now—she was his Alyse and at the same time someone else completely. And the thought that some man might have hurt her…angered him.
    He shook himself. Puzzling out Alyse would have to wait. She’d given him a clue, and he needed to follow it. He swung back into the saddle. “Walk, Daffodil.”
    At the best pace the mare could muster, it took him nearly thirty minutes to reach the boundaries of Quence’s large, low-lying east pasture. In the past sheep would be scattered across the low grass, inviting some artist or other to paint the pastoral scene. Now, though, it was empty, with shimmers of light reflecting from between the blades of grass and dragonflies skimming the wide stretches of wet. “Good God,” he muttered.
    There had to be three inches of water covering the entire pasture. At the upper end he spied several men, and encouraged the reluctant mare through the ankle-deep marsh to the higher bank of the stream.
    Three of the men stood arguing with a fourth, who was better dressed and on horseback. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Phineas drawled, stopping beside a cart full of rocks.
    They stopped bickering to look at him. “Who’re you?” the stoutest of them asked, stabbing the end of a shovel into the wet ground and resting his crossed arms on the handle.
    Phineas gazed at him steadily, unmoved by the show of aggression. “Colonel Phin Bromley,” he said, crossing his own wrists over the saddle’s pommel. “Who are you?”
    “Brown,” the fellow retorted.
    “And what are you doing on my land, Mr. Brown?” Technically the land belonged to William, but it had been in the Bromley family for generations, and he was still a Bromley.
    Mr. Brown spat into the mud. “If it was your land, you’d know why we was here, Colonel Bromley.”
    Hm.