The Rogue's Proposal by Jennifer Haymore Read Free Book Online Page B

your courtship?”
    “Almost a year. When the Season ended, I returned to Bristol with my father and Jane.
     Henry and I began a correspondence.”
    “I see. Where did he hail from?” Luke’s voice was flat, modulated, so was she imagining
     the edge to it? But then again, why would he be anything but curious about her murdered
     husband?
    “London.”
    “So you maintained a correspondence. How did this lead to marriage?”
    “He proposed marriage via a letter to my father that winter.”
    “And your father said yes. You did, too.”
    She squirmed a little. What a naïve, stupid little girl she’d been. So taken with
     the handsome and dashing Henry Curtis. He had a curricle like this one, but smaller
     and even more dangerous. Riding in it had made her feel so reckless and wild, so brazen.
     The first time he’d taken her riding in Hyde Park and kissed her behind an elm tree,
     she’d been so breathless and excited she’d nearly swooned.
    She wasn’t that girl anymore.
    “We both said yes,” she told Luke now. “We wrote our acceptances in a letter, first
     my father and then me.”
    She’d been so certain she was in love, but now she wasn’t so sure. She was in love
     with the attention he’d given her. She was in love with the way he’d made her laugh.
     With the way he’d sneaked into her room on a warm London summer evening and kissed
     her until she couldn’t breathe.
    She’d been more fascinated by him than by any of the aristocratic gentlemen she’d
     danced with at the Season’s assemblies and soirees. Henry hadn’t been a nobleman or
     an aristocrat, but he was a moneyed gentleman. He’d told her that his parents and
     sister lived in Yorkshire. When she’d tried to contact them after his death, her letters
     had been returned unopened.
    “Why did you marry him?” Luke asked her now. “Did you love him?”
    She stiffened. “That’s a rather personal question, don’t you think?”
    “Yes. So?”
    She stared straight ahead, debating whether to answer.
    It came down to the fact that Luke had agreed to bring her with him, and she owed
     him for that. “I loved him,” she said in a clipped voice. But then she felt compelled
     to add, “In some respects.”
    “I see.” He looked at her, his blue eyes serious, a slight crease between his brows.
     “Did he love you?”
    Something inside her recoiled. If she’d thought the last question was too personal,
     this one surely surpassed all bounds of decency.
    They rattled over a rut in the road, giving her a reason to grip the edge of her seat.
    She didn’t answer for a long while. He didn’t press her.
    Finally, she said, in a very low, very miserable voice, “I don’t think so.”
    A week after the wedding, she’d started to worry. A month after the wedding, she’d
     begun to panic. Because as the days went by, it became increasingly clear that Henry
     possessed no interest in her as a wife, even as another human being. He’d married
     her for her father’s money. He’d married her because she was an heiress with a very
     generous dowry.
    It had had nothing to do with her.
    No, he hadn’t loved her. He’d seduced her and wooed her with everything he had, but once the dowry
     was in his hands and his future secured with the promise of much more, he’d showed
     his true colors.
    Perhaps he’d even actively disliked her the whole time he’d been telling her how lovely
     and sweet she was. Perhaps he’d shivered with revulsion when he’d whispered how he
     wanted nothing more than to take her to his bed.
    All the money was gone now. It was her fault. If she hadn’t married Henry, he’d have
     never become involved with Roger Morton. Papa’s fortune would still be safe.
    Guilt swamped her—a feeling she was accustomed to now. She’d made a foolish choice,
     and her family had paid dearly for it.
    Luke seemed not to have heard her. He was concentrating on negotiating the horses
     over the bumps and curves in the