Too Wild to Wed by Jayne Ann Krentz Read Free Book Online Page A

Letty is going for wider and wilder experience."
    "All the same, I'm not sure how Dr. Stirling would feel if he found out his precious little golden girl, whom everyone knows he is grooming for promotion and tenure, was out carousing with a group like the Revelers. You know Stirling thinks the world of you." Dr. Elliott Stirling, patrician-featured, silver-haired and much respected in academic circles, was chairman of the history department. He had been extremely pleased when the new assistant professor of medieval studies had begun writing papers that had gotten Tipton College's department of history mentioned in several prestigious journals.
    "Stirling may have taken some notice only because I've gotten a few things published in some of his favorite journals," Letty muttered. "You know the old saying, Molly. In the academic world, it's still publish or perish. Stirling would lose interest in promoting me tomorrow if he thought I was never going to get another paper in print."
    Stirling had made no secret of his satisfaction with Letty and she would have been naive, indeed, not to realize she was slated for rapid advancement at Tipton College. Unless, of course, she blotted her copybook so badly that Stirling became annoyed.
    Letty cringed inwardly at that thought. After all, until she had made the mistake of getting engaged to Xavier Augustine, her academic career had been the most important thing in her life. And there was no denying that in a small, inbred academic community such as Tipton College, the double standard in behavior still applied to a certain extent, just as it did in the modern corporate world.
    The flat truth, although everyone denied it, of course, was that the social rules for men were still different than those for women, just as they had been during the Middle Ages. People might turn a blind eye to the peccadilloes of a male member of the faculty but they would frown severely on similar behavior on the part of a female faculty member.
    Not that some progress had not been made in the past eight hundred years, Letty reminded herself wryly. Back in the Middle Ages women had not even been allowed to join an academic faculty, let alone given an opportunity to struggle for tenure.
    "I realize Stirling is delighted with you because you've brought some prestige to the department," Molly said patiently. "You can't hold that against him. In a lot of ways he's no different than a manager in a large corporation who promotes the people under him because they made his department look good. That's the way the real world works and you know it. You can't do anything to jeopardize your career."
    "I'll be discreet," Letty vowed.
    "Even Sheldon has the sense to keep fairly quiet about his activities with the Revelers. No one around here really knows what goes on at those meetings he attends. All we've heard are a few rumors and I, for one, don't like the sound of them. From all accounts there's a lot of partying and general carousing."
    "What's wrong with that?" Letty asked defiantly.
    "It's not you, Letty."
    'It is now."
    Molly sighed. "I think you should reconsider the idea of rushing off to join this crowd. Find some other way to show Augustine you aren't suitable wife material."
    Letty scowled. "I'm not doing this to prove anything to Xavier. I'm doing it for myself."
    Molly grinned. "Don't give me that. You were perfectly content with your life until this morning. If you'd felt the need to experiment with walking on the wild side, you'd have tried it years ago. Even you must have had a few opportunities along the way. You weren't that sheltered."
    Letty slapped the table with her palm, thoroughly outraged now because Molly was too close to the truth. She had been very content with her life until this morning. "It's the principle of the thing, damn it."
    "Hey, hey, hey," said a jovial new voice. "Did I hear the word principle? Sounds like an academic sort of argument going on here. Nothing I like better. Mind if I join