The Taming of Ryder Cavanaugh by Stephanie Laurens Read Free Book Online

his father, he was slated to marry anyway; giving up a few years of his bachelor existence—an existence that had grown rather wearying of late—seemed a small price to pay for the freedom of making his own choice, of directing his own hunt.
    Especially for the position of his marchioness, a person he regarded as critical to his future.
    To the future he was determined to have.
    Attuned to Mary as he now was—as his quarry, she was the cynosure of his senses—he knew when she reached the point of turning away from Rand and moving on. Physically, at least.
    Her face was a study in disillusioned disappointment.
    “Come on.” He offered his arm. “You probably genuinely could do with some air now.”
    She humphed, but in disgruntled resignation rather than disagreement, and consented to lay her hand on his sleeve. Even that light touch he felt to his marrow.
    “Actually,” she said, as he turned her to the French doors, “I truly did want to stroll outside. It’s quite cloying in here.”
    “No fan?” He held aside the filmy curtains and angled her through the door onto the flags.
    She shook her head. “Too bothersome.”
    He’d noticed she had little affinity for the usual frills and furbelows; she carried a reticule, but even that was more practical than fanciful.
    Resisting an urge to close his hand over hers, he steered her slowly along the terrace, adjusting his stride to hers. Trying to imagine just where she thought she was in her pursuit of his half brother.
    Typically, he didn’t have to imagine too hard—she told him.
    “This simply isn’t right .” Eyes on the flags ahead of them, lips set in a mutinous line, with her free hand she waved at the terrace around them. “Why the devil couldn’t Randolph escort me for this stroll out here?”
    He heaved a histrionic sigh. “Put simply, because you’re too much for him. A dish too rich for his blood.”
    She cast him a narrow-eyed look. “You don’t seem to find me so.”
    He smiled; the notion was nonsensical. “Of course not.”
    “But if you don’t—if you can interact with me—why can’t he?”
    “At the risk of repeating myself, I’m thirty and he’s twenty-four. In the ages of man, that’s a significant difference.”
    “Would you have scurried off like he did when you were twenty-four?”
    He gave the matter due thought. “Truth be told, I’m not sure I remember what I was like at twenty-four, but . . . probably not.”
    She humphed more definitely; she could infuse a wealth of emotion into the simple sound.
    Rand, he suspected, had managed to get fairly seriously in her bad books, but she couldn’t really blame his brother. She seemed to have no appreciation of her own strength—of the sheer power of her personality, something she projected without any mitigating screens.
    That was one of the things he found attractive—that lack of screens or veils—but men like Rand, regardless of age, would run; in fact Rand had merely demonstrated that he had a functioning sense of self-preservation.
    They reached the end of the terrace. Lifting her hand from his sleeve, Mary executed a crisp about-face. “Right, then. I suppose I’d better get back to it.”
    She set off for the French doors, striding along a great deal more purposefully.
    Left standing, bemused, by the balustrade, he swung around and with a few quick strides caught up with her. “Back to what?”
    “Back to finding some way to speak with your brother—half brother—in private.”
    “Ah—I see.” They reached the French doors and he held back the gauze curtains so she could march through unimpeded.
    As he followed her back into the fray of the ballroom, he debated whether he should allow her to chase Rand, and possibly mark his brother for life, or . . .
    He glanced at the dais on which the musicians sat—just as they started to play. “Mary.”
    Halting, she glanced back at him, her expression clearly stating that she didn’t appreciate the delay in