Eloisa James by With This Kiss Read Free Book Online Page A

feel that for her. But it wouldn’t be Colin.
    “Thank you, Papa,” she said, resting her head against his shoulder.
    “I won’t allow him to marry Lily,” he said, touching the painting with a finger. “He couldn’t see what lay before him. I won’t give him another of my girls to overlook.”
    Grace shrugged. “It’s all right, Papa. I’ve put him behind me.”
    The duke wrapped up the painting again. “Colin has to be the stupidest man I know.” He paused. “Actually, I have a lot in common with him.”
    Grace sat down on the sofa and drew up her feet under her. “Do you mean because you went away to sea and left Mama behind?”
    “Exactly,” her father said, going back to making a neat package of the painting. “I was worse than Colin, actually, because I was already married to your mother, and I knew I loved her.”
    “But she told you to leave,” Grace said, repeating the story that they all loved. “She told you to leave and never come back, and you didn’t return for seven years.”
    “That’s right,” the duke said. “Given my profound stupidity in obeying her, I can hardly say anything about Captain Barry’s idiocy.” He looked up, and suddenly he looked like a pirate again. “Of course, if he comes around here and tries to woo either of my daughters, I’ll disembowel him.”
    Grace laughed. “Sir Griffin wouldn’t like that.”
    “He wouldn’t, would he?” The duke’s laugh welcomed a fight with his closest friend.
    “I think I’ll go take a bath,” she said, tired to the bone.
    “I’ll send this out,” he said. “And I’ll put in a note from myself as well.”
    Grace continued up the stairs. She didn’t really care what her father wrote in that note.

 
    Eight
    In which the Duke of Ashbrook plays a game of billiards with Lord Griffin Barry, shortly after Griffin’s son Colin asked for James’s daughter Lily’s hand in marriage.
    T hey had played three rounds in the kind of easy silence that falls between men who’ve known each other for years, tumbling about when they were boys, fighting shoulder-to-shoulder as men.
    James watched Griffin pocket three balls in a row before he said, at just the right moment, “Your boy asked for Lily’s hand in marriage before he left.”
    Sure enough, the cue bounced against the felt, nearly gouging a hole in it. Griffin uttered a curse and straightened, pushing a lock of hair out of his eyes. “Colin, I take it?”
    James nodded. “The same.”
    “Bloody hell, he was only on shore for three days.”
    “Infatuated. It’s a common condition. Half the men under thirty in the city of London have fallen under Lily’s spell.”
    Griffin put the cue down and turned away, walking a step toward the fireplace, running a hand through his hair. “He told me . . .” He stopped for a moment, his back still turned. “He told me that he couldn’t sleep but dancing with Lily helped.”
    “I cannot allow him to marry Lily,” James said, keeping his voice even. He loved Griffin as his own brother, but children came before a brother. Before his own life.
    Griffin poked at the fire. “And if Lily is the only thing that allows Colin to sleep?”
    James felt a chill in the back of his throat, as if he’d swallowed a gulp of crushed ice. Almost nothing would drive he and Griffin apart . . . but this could do it.
    But before he could answer, Griffin turned around. His eyes were burning with anguish. “He’s dying,” he said flatly. “Being at war is killing him. When Colin comes home, he can’t sleep for the dreams. He won’t tell me the details, but I think he sees dead men walking in the streets of London. The other day a ham-handed footman dropped a platter in the hallway and Colin was out of his seat, back against the wall, before the sound died away.”
    “Hell,” James said. When they were pirates together, years ago, there were men who thrived on the smoke and blood of battle, and there were others whose souls unraveled,