Bridegroom Wore Plaid by Grace Burrowes Read Free Book Online Page B

language.”
    She glanced around, as if someone might censure her for using “such language.”
    “A guest in my home, particularly in my library, can use any damned language necessary to express herself. I hope you enjoy the book, Miss Augusta .”
    And then he did something impulsive—something a little brave, a little selfish, and more than a little stupid. He gave her a peck on the lips.
    A bit more than a peck, really. Enough of a kiss to learn that she had soft, sweet lips and she hadn’t been kissed worth a damn in recent memory. Her hand brushed down his chest, a fleeting caress to him, no doubt a simple bid for balance to her.
    When he straightened, her hand stayed on the wool of his morning coat for one moment, while both of them stood there, staring at her elegant, bare fingers smoothing down his lapel.
    Temptation barreled out of the depths of Ian’s male imagination, ambushing common sense with ideas Ian had no business thinking.
    He would love to teach her to kiss.
    He would love to take down all that black, shining hair and bury his face in it.
    He would love to walk barefoot with her in the morning dew and lay her down in the cool summer grass…
    While the sheer, beaming innocence of her smile said Augusta Merrick had no clue what he was thinking, no clue about any of it.
    “I bid you a good morning, Miss Augusta.” She looked so pleased at the simple use of her name Ian would have turned from the sight even if there were not hours of work awaiting him elsewhere, and even if he had not flirted with lunacy by kissing her.
    Not that anybody would mind if he dallied with her—she was a poor relation, and marriage was a calculating, unromantic business among the titled English… and lately the titled Scots, apparently.
    He would mind if he dallied with her, and what a damned inconvenience that was.
    As he made his way to the stables, Ian acknowledged he and Miss Merrick—Miss Augusta—had something else unexpected in common.
    When he and his family had made the decision earlier in the year to file to have Asher declared dead, Mary Fran had insisted it was time for Ian to start using the title. He’d had a courtesy title—Viscount Deesely—but he’d never used it much. With the stroke of a pen on some arcane court pleadings, he’d become not Ian, but—presumptively and presumptuously—my lord, Balfour, Lord Balfour. The earl , but for the remaining legalities.
    He could go entire weeks without hearing his own name, unless he was in company with his siblings. Inside, inside his very sense of himself, he felt the impending loss of some part of his identity with each use of more formal address. He couldn’t reverse this sense of loss; he relied on his family to do it for him by frequent use of his given name.
    And now he knew he was not alone in his sense of isolation. Even proper little spinsters from the backwaters of Oxfordshire could suffer the same gnawing fear that if nobody ever called them by name, a part of them would eventually cease to be.
    ***
    “They ride well for a trio of proper ladies.” Gil made the observation grudgingly, because women who rode well were women who’d had the luxury of spare time to learn, indulgent male relations to teach them, and good horses to learn on.
    “Mary Fran could have come along if she’d wanted to,” Connor replied. “She’d rather terrorize the staff and concoct spells and incantations to shrivel the baron’s pizzle.”
    “Hush, you.” Gil nudged his horse forward to keep in step with Connor’s younger mount. “Mary Fran hates that sort of talk.”
    “Then she shouldn’t go dancing naked under the Beltane moon, should she?”
    Gil did not ask whether Con was speaking figuratively or if he’d really seen their sister comporting herself without clothing by moonlight. God knew, Mary Fran was entitled to a little eccentricity, but Ian would be beside himself if she’d gone that far.
    “The widow…” Con hesitated, his gaze on Mrs.