I Kissed an Earl: Pennyroyal Green Series by Julie Anne Long Read Free Book Online

bring him down, she had no doubt he would do it.
    She turned her head away from him quickly.
    But what if Lavay, that elegant Frenchman, were indeed the man meant for her? If this had naught to do with Lyon? What if this was what the Gypsy girl had meant? What ought she to feel in this moment? Did it happen quickly, or come on slowly, love? How had Miles and Cynthia known? How on earth did it feel to not feel bored and restless and trapped?
    “Well, you better meet ’im soon, Vi, the man you’ll marry, or you’ll be on the shelf and our parents will be saddled with you and whatever will father do with your dowry?” Jonathan said this with apparent concern. Eyes dancing mischievously.
    Violet cut a glance sideways at her brother. “Yes, I best hurry. Pity I’m an impoverished homely crone and no one shall want me a year from now, or two years from now, or ever.”
    Jonathan turned to his sister in abject admiration and exasperation. Gave his head a shake. Violet had more confidence than any man he’d ever met, far more than was healthy for a woman, and he knew enough of London gossip, and of the contents of the betting books at White’s, to know the fascination she held for the bloods in the ton. And yet he honestly couldn’t picture her besotted with any of the men he knew, or blushing helplessly like the poor woman he’d just been flirting with. When and if Violet ever fell in love, lightning would split the heavens, tectonic plates would shift, continents would reorder themselves.
    Because she might be willful and spoiled and impetuous, but no one loved with the force of his sister. Her love story would be epic.
    Which was why Lyon’s disappearance had cut her deepest. Even he knew it. And it could very well be the reason Violet never fell in love at all.
    “Just…don’t do it, Violet.”
    This had never been a successful admonition when it came to Violet.
    “Do what?”
    “Whatever it is you’re contemplating.”
    She turned to Jonathan in surprise. “I seldom contemplate, Jonathan. Things just…happen.”
    And with that she blew him a kiss and sailed gracefully away across the ballroom, the eyes of yearning, if wary, bloods following her.

Chapter 4
    V iolet pushed back a heavy velvet curtain and peered out the Redmonds’ London town house window and thought: Rathskill. The “incompetent and cheeky” cook’s mate the earl needed to replace.
    All was blackness below, as it was just past one o’clock in the morning. She had left the ball with her parents in the Redmond family coach; and her parents had gone up to bed…together. Simultaneously. This happened more and more frequently lately. Decidedly odd when their marriage had long seemed to be one of affectionate tolerance, where Isaiah invariably did as he pleased and Fanchette spent his money. In recent months some subtle shift of power had taken place, some fresh new fascination with each other had taken root, and Violet had begun to wonder whether she’d acquired her skills at managing men, such as they were, from her father, or from her mother.
    She thought she could trace this back to one particular cozy family occasion, where all the Redmonds, including their young cousin Lisbeth, had gathered to watch Colin Eversea hang from a scaffold erected below the window. Naturally, since he was an Eversea, he’d instead disappeared from the scaffold amidst explosions and clouds of smoke. It marked the first and only occasion she’d ever heard her father lose his patience. Specifically, he’d shouted “son of a bitch!” The sound of his control snapping like a taxed gallows rope. The crowd had rioted and all of London took to singing a particularly insidiously catchy song all about Colin Eversea, a song that lived on and on and on, in theaters and pubs, everywhere. The Everseas had the luck of the devil, it was said.
    Colin didn’t hang. Colin had in fact married a mysterious dark-haired woman he brought to church every Sunday at Pennyroyal