The Makeshift Marriage by Sandra Heath Read Free Book Online Page A

you.”
    The baron’s dark eyes swung angrily to her then. “Whores should be seen and fondled, madam, but never, ever heard!”
    “You go too far now,” said Nicholas in a cold voice.
    “Too far? When I state the obvious —that the lady is a whore?”
    “You are a liar, and have lost any claim to being called a gentleman.”
    Again the baron smiled. “I suggest that you retract that, my dear sir, for I do not take kindly to being insulted.”
    “I retract nothing.”
    Laura stared from one to the other in growing horror. The inevitability of it all was terrifying. They were moving toward an unavoidable confrontation, and she was the unwitting catalyst. the pawn the baron had chosen to employ. For some reason the Austrian had singled Nicholas Grenville out to be his eleventh victim, and he would be just that unless she could dissuade him now from allowing the baron to force him into a corner from which there was no escape.
    “Sir Nicholas,” she pleaded, “don’t listen to him, don’t let him have his way. He wants a duel, can’t you see? Please, just retract and let it finish at that! Please.” She whispered the last word, almost in tears now, for she knew that she could not divert him.
    Nicholas ignored her. “I will not retract,” he said again to the baron.
    “Then I consider my honor to be impugned and I demand satisfaction.”
    “No!” breathed Laura desperately. “No!”
    The baron smiled coldly at her. “He will not listen to you, Miss Milbanke, for he is an English gentleman, a man of pride and honor. He would sacrifice both were he to step down from me now. Is that not so, Grenville?”
    She lowered her eyes. This could not be happening. Only a short while ago she had been on the balcony in the sunshine, everything had been so calm and pleasant… . Now it was all a nightmare from which she could not awaken.
    Nicholas spoke. “Name your time and place and send your seconds to me.”
    Laura’s fingers slipped away from his. Blinded by tears she leaned her hands on the cold marble surface of a table, her head bowed. He was throwing his life away, and for what? For honor! What was foolish honor when set beside his life?
    She heard little of the next exchange between the two men before the baron left the room, nor did she hear much of what the two Austrian officers said as they offered their services to Nicholas as his seconds. Then they too had gone and she was alone with Nicholas.
    He closed the door and she turned to look at him, tears shining in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I’m so sorry —”
    “You have no reason to be.”
    “If I had not involved you in my foolish anxieties, then he would not have been able —”
    “I involved myself willingly enough, and I must remind you that you distinctly tried your best to avert the danger. I chose not to listen.”
    “It’s still all my fault.”
    “No.” He took his handkerchief and gently wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Please don’t cry, for I cannot bear to see a woman weep.”
    “He used me in order to force you into this duel.”
    “Come now, that is a little fanciful. You underestimate yourself, Miss Milbanke, for you are an exceedingly beautiful woman, by far desirable enough to lure a man like the baron.”
    But she could remember the baron’s words only too clearly. But now it is done, in a few minutes it will all be over and my purpose completed —well, almost completed…. Even had you been as ugly as sin itself, Miss Milbanke, then I should still have come here now. Fortune, however, has smiled upon me and made you so very beautiful that my task will be sweetly accomplished. Oh, how sweetly…. Those were not the words of a man driven solely by desire to possess her, they were the words of a man who had an entirely different object in view. He had also said something about her beauty almost leading him astray from his main purpose. What else could he mean but that until this one time he would not have