Taming Beauty by Lynne Barron Read Free Book Online Page A

three months before the wedding.”
    “Dunaway only borrowed Rose,” she replied. “To my knowledge he didn’t get a daughter on her so you could have married her still. Or if you insist upon marrying an innocent, surely there are any number of comely country girls who would gladly take you on.”
    “A highborn wife with an untarnished reputation.” Jasper’s voice came out harsher than he’d intended, but her refusal to turn away from the garden had his temper sparking.
    “It seems you do hear the tittle tattle from Town even way out here. I was beginning to wonder.”
    “Because I wasn’t aware Dunaway had fathered an illegitimate daughter, you mean?”
    Miss Aberdeen straightened from her elegant slouch against the bannister and rounded on him, her catlike green eyes widening. “You weren’t aware Dun had fathered… But surely…” Whatever words she’d been poised to utter fell away when she frowned, her face going pale but for twin spots of color cresting her cheeks.
    “Miss Aberdeen.” Jasper reached for her, his fingertips brushing her upper arm before he realized what he was doing. He jerked his hand back, only belatedly feeling the heat of her flesh from the brief contact.
    “That lying, conniving bastard,” she said with a laugh that sounded raw. “Just when I think… But never mind. And please, you might as well call me Lilith.”
    “We are soon to be family,” he replied, a much needed reminder that this woman, with her flyaway curls and almost unbearably beautiful face, was forever out of his reach.
    “Family? We’ll be nothing of the sort.”
    “I hate to contradict a lady—”
    “I’m no lady.” Her gaze fell to his hand and he realized he was flexing and shaking his fingers as if he’d touch live flames and the tips had come away singed. “As we both know.”
    “All the same, you are my future wife’s sister.”
    “Oh for goodness sake,” she exclaimed, flicking the cheroot over the bannister. “Why is it everyone keeps tossing that bloody word about?”
    “Wife?”
    “Sister,” she huffed. “You will never see so much as a shilling of the interest on Dunaway’s debt, let alone recoup any portion of the principal. You do realize that, don’t you?”
    “I hold the mortgages to two of the earl’s un-entailed properties, including the estate on which Lady Dunaway was born and raised. Should his lordship default on his loan, I will simply take possession of the properties and sell them.”
    “Goodness, that will make for a felicitous marriage,” she replied with a wry grin. “Both yours and Dunaway’s.”
    “Perhaps he ought to have considered the consequences to his actions before he seduced my betrothed.”
    “As you considered the consequences before you seduced Lord Morrissey’s mistress?” Lilith shot back, her aim straight and true. “I’ve never quite understood the sequence of events. Did you lay with Mrs. Denton before or after you wagered and lost your fortune to the viscount?”
    Jasper raised two fingers to his brow in salute of her marksmanship.
    “And how did the duel come about?” she persisted, her gaze tracing the line of raised flesh running along his cheek. “Did you name Morrissey a cheat and challenge him to meet you at dawn?”
    “He took exception to his paramour bedding a bankrupt Cornishman.”
    “Well, of course he did. Morrissey only turns a blind eye for wealthy earls and dukes who might contribute some bauble or trinket to his coffers. You ought to have chosen pistols as it is common knowledge his lordship is deadly with a sword.”
    “I hadn’t the choice of weapons,” Jasper admitted, enjoying himself immensely and wanting only to continue to have all of her considerable wit and wry humor aimed squarely at him for as long as possible. “Seeing as I called him out for the slur against my countrymen.”
    “Were you still in Mrs. Denton’s bedchamber when you challenged him?”
    “Actually, the lady lay next to me on a