How a Lady Weds a Rogue by Katharine Ashe Read Free Book Online Page A

touching her. Somehow it felt wrong, especially since she wasn’t without blame, seeking refuge in a stable due to her own reckless misjudgment. “And I meant, of course, that I thought you seemed heroic until you told me you would not assist me.”
    His broad shoulders seemed to release their rigidity. “She giveth, and again taketh away. Is this un-complimenting a habit of yours?”
    “My dimples are perfectly sincere.”
    “I haven’t the slightest doubt of it. I also haven’t the slightest doubt that you are a remarkably troublesome young lady.”
    She blinked slowly, dark lashes fanning over lapis eyes. Then she turned about and walked to her traveling trunk. Without pretension she settled upon the trunk and folded her hands atop her lap.
    “You’ve just sat in a puddle.”
    She turned her face away, confronting him with her lovely profile. “A mundane care.” But the corner of her lips quivered not now from laughter.
    Wyn’s anger evaporated. Silence commenced, during which the only sounds were the snufflings of the horses that had sunk their noses in the grass at the side of the road, the soft whimpers of the mutt at his knee, and the increasingly steady rain. Each moment she less and less resembled the spoiled runaways he’d dealt with before. She was determination crossed with sincerity and an innocent sort of wisdom. And, before, he’d never looked upon a girl’s face and wished to do her bidding. Rather, only once, and at that time he had felt that girl’s anger too.
    But Miss Lucas was not angry. She was merely seeking her past down a rainy road.
    He wanted to see her dimples again. The need for it came upon him quite powerfully.
    “Do you even have an umbrella?”
    Her gaze remained averted. “That, admittedly, is one detail I failed to plan.”
    “Did you also fail to inquire of the coachman that left you off where exactly the next stop is?”
    “I did.” She twisted her lips. “Our disembarkation was rather hasty, in point of fact.”
    “I daresay.”
    Finally she cast him a glance. “Do you know where the next stop is?”
    “I do. It is but a quarter mile up the highway.”
    Her face brightened. “You have taken this road before, then?”
    “A few times.” He knew this road and the roads to the west and south as well as he knew his name, and sometimes better. Leaving Gwynedd at age fifteen, he had not strayed too far afield at first, not for three years, until he finally made it to Cambridge. The highways and one-track paths, hills, and farms of the Welsh borderlands and western Shropshire all the way to his great-aunt’s estate were more home to him than his father’s house had ever been.
    She leaped up. “Well, then, I should be on my way.” She gave a glance at the traveling trunk, released a quick breath of decision, then took up her bandbox and set off. Her boots sank into mud with each step but she seemed not to note it.
    “Miss Lucas, I advise returning now to your traveling trunk and removing the valuables and any necessities before you continue on.”
    “I will send someone back for it when I reach the posting house.” Her cloak was sodden, even her bonnet brim drooped, the errant chestnut curls that clung to her cheeks and throat making delicate dark swirls upon the cream of her skin.
    He glanced down at the mongrel wagging its tail beside him and murmured, “She has no idea the danger this escapade offers her.” Then more loudly: “I must insist.”
    She halted and turned to face him. She tilted her head. “You sound different sometimes. Just then, when you said that, you sounded . . .”
    He waited.
    Pale roses blossomed on her cheeks. “Like you did last night in the stable. And like you did that night at the ball for Lord and Lady Blackwood’s wedding, when you rescued me.”
    Ah. Clearly she had an inclination toward the dramatic. He recalled the incident, of course: a frightened girl, a pack of rowdy lads no less disguised than he at the time, and some