The Wedding Escape by Karyn Monk Read Free Book Online

Whitcliffe, Jack decided, albeit at her father’s expense. Jack didn’t know Philmore, but if he was at all typical of his class, Jack knew his type. Spoiled, arrogant, and lazy. Jack supposed he should not judge him for being tediously representative of his class. After all, even Haydon had once borne these very same traits. But if this Philmore cared for Miss Belford as much as she evidently believed he did, why hadn’t he married her? Had it been Jack, he would never have let Amelia’s subsequent betrothal to Whitcliffe and her parents’ refusal to let him see her stand in his way. If he had suspected for an instant that she was being forced into a marriage she did not want, he would have bloody well charged through her home and knocked aside anyone who got in his way as he took her out.
    He extricated himself from his chair, too weary to think about the matter anymore. He blew out the lamp in the library and slowly mounted the stairs, unfastening the buttons of his shirt.
    Upon reaching the upstairs floor he noticed a spill of lamplight seeping onto the richly woven Persian carpet from the ajar door of the guest bedroom. Frowning, he walked toward it, wondering if something was amiss with Miss Belford.
    Asleep, she lay tucked in a tiny ball upon the bed, her honey-gold hair trickling in soft swells across the expansive white ocean of her pillow and sheets. Her hapless wedding gown and veil rested in a discarded froth upon a chair, and there was a tray of tea, toast, and cold beef sitting untouched upon a table. She had kicked off her woolen blankets, but the air gusting through the open window was cool, and it was clear to Jack as he moved toward her that she was chilled and needed to be covered.
    She was wearing a nightgown of ivory cotton, delicately embroidered with a scattering of tiny pink rosebuds at the neckline and trimmed with a cascade of filmy lace. It was void of all the shimmering ornamentation that had rendered her wedding gown so ostentatious, and Jack felt it suited her much better. The scalloped neckline draped loosely over her shoulder and across her breasts, exposing an expanse of silky skin, and the lacy hem had shifted up her calves as she kicked away her blankets, revealing her small, perfectly formed feet. He leaned upon the bedpost and studied her a long moment.
    And then he frowned at the sparkle of tears upon her lashes.
    He should have asked Lizzie to stay with her, he realized. Despite the confident, determined composure she had maintained during their ride to London, it was clear Miss Belford’s wedding day had been filled with extreme emotions, which obviously had taken their toll when she finally rested her head against her pillow. But for his agreeing to spirit her away, the young woman before him would have been a prisoner in Whitcliffe’s bed tonight, a terrified, unwilling bride with no choice but to endure whatever her new husband wanted of her. And Whitcliffe would have wanted as much of her as he could consume. Despite the duke’s advanced age and substantial weight, Jack did not believe any man could have resisted such exquisite beauty.
    Outrage unfurled within him. No man had the right to force himself on an unwilling woman, regardless of whether the law, the church, and her parents conspired to give him that right. Jack did not know whether Amelia had wept out of fear of her future or sheer relief at having escaped her bondage to Whitcliffe. Whatever the reason, the trail of tears staining her cheek cut him to the core. He lifted the disheveled blankets at the foot of the bed and clumsily draped them over her.
    Then he blew out the lamp and quit the room, too angry to wonder at the unfamiliar flame of protectiveness burgeoning within his chest.

Chapter Three
    A MELIA SHRANK FURTHER INTO THE DARK RECESSES
of her father’s wardrobe, her sweaty hand gripping the frayed string she had tied to a nail on one of the doors to keep them closed. She liked