Captured Love by Jane Lark Read Free Book Online Page B

not been able to sleep after his exertions last
night. He’d lain awake longing to go back for a second
course, and wishing he had not left her bed.
    He would go back tonight.
    Meredith came into the room, and he instantly stood,
looking at her and nodding slightly. “Good morning, Meredith.”
    Her eyes focused on his and she gave him that smile,
the one which sought to please. The one which had annoyed him
for so many months. A warm sensation gripped in his chest.
    Last night he’d had to direct her to sit at the far
end of the table when she would have taken a seat near him. This morning he
beckoned her forward. It would do no harm in the mornings. Her lips parted, her
smile broadening.
    The warmth, which had blossomed in his chest when she
came in, tightened its grip, and left him feeling short of breath.
    “Sit here, Meredith; we may be informal in the
mornings.”
    A footman drew out a chair, and once she was seated, the
man poured her chocolate.
    Rupert’s heart thumped oddly as he remembered the body
beneath her clothes, and how last night it had responded so beautifully to him.
    Another footman offered to fill her plate.
    “How are you?” Rupert asked. Her head, which had been
bent, now lifted and her gaze met his, that lovely vivid blue. “Did you sleep
well?”
    She seemed paler than normal and she looked tired.
Perhaps her conscience — if she had one — had been bothering her. It should be
bothering her... The girl had tricked him into marrying her. Yet today, he was
far less angry about the whole debacle.
    “Yes, thank you, Lord Morton.”
    “There is little point in you calling me that, now.
You must call me, Rupert, Meredith.”
    She blushed and then glanced at Rowena, who only now
lifted her gaze from her letter, and then put the letter aside. Rowena did not
speak, though. She merely glanced at her former friend, before picking up her
cutlery and starting her breakfast.
    Rupert picked up the paper and passed it to Meredith.
“My announcement is in here.” Then he rose, having finished eating. He would go
to Jackson’s, and then dine at White’s, before it was the hour to go to the
House of Lords.
    He glanced at Rowena. “I have asked Ellen to take you
and Meredith shopping today.”
    Rowena looked up, and gave him the sympathetic smile she’d
been bestowing on him ever since Meredith had played her ace. Rowena felt
guilty, whether her friend did or not. She had been apologizing constantly
during the last couple of days; her look suggested another.
    He smiled back. Welcome or not, intended or not,
Meredith was to live with them now and they must make the best of it. Rowena
would have to learn to forgive as he had to learn to accept. Since last night
though, he thought it might be easier than he’d expected to accept his new
fate.
    He glanced at Meredith again. She stood, as though to
speak or to do something, but then appeared to not know what...
    He left.
     
      “Rowena —” Meredith began as she took her seat again,
but her former friend just lifted her hand.
    “I am not listening to you apologize, Meredith. He is
my brother, and I love him dearly. I am too angry to speak to you. He deserves
far more than to be trapped by —”
    “I did not plan what I did, Rowena,” Meredith
whispered. “It was not like that.”
    Rowena leaned across the table, and with a vicious
pitch, ignoring the footmen, accused, “Then how was it? He had no interest in
you. You know he did not. I suppose you only became my friend so you might get
close enough to him for this...”
    “No! It is not like that! I fell in love him after we
became friends, but I have loved him for weeks... I know he does not like me,
but my father had agreed a marriage with his business partner. Perrigrew is old, and bitter, and I did not —”
    “Wish to marry him? And so you thought you’d force my brother’s
hand. I will shop with you today, Meredith.” Rowena stood up, dropping her
napkin on the tablecloth. “But do