With This Kiss: Part Two by Eloisa James Read Free Book Online

honored to help a member of the Royal Navy.” He stopped, seemingly out of breath after this flow of conversation.
    Colin had a dizzy sensation, as if he were trapped in a laudanum dream that never ended. It was impossible.
    He’d never heard of such a thing.
    It was one thing to lose a day or two, to have no memory of giving orders regarding a remove to Arbor House. Hell, he meant to do that anyway. Perhaps he never woke, and the duchess, knowing his plans, bundled him in a carriage.
    No, she would never do that. He must have been awake enough to extract himself from her care and demand his carriage.
    But to find himself married was another question.
    Who in the hell had he married?
    “Did you say my wife ?” he asked.
    There was an infinitesimal pause, and the innkeeper’s voice changed, taking on a dollop of sympathy. “I’m guessing that you suffered a fearsome blow to the head, Captain Barry, and you’re experiencing some loss of your memory. That is entirely normal, I assure you. Why, after my neighbor’s boy fell from the ridge top, he plumb forgot that he was left-handed and started using his right, like any Christian!”
    “I assure you that I have not overlooked a wife,” Colin said, barely stopping himself from reaching out and throttling the man’s neck.
    “Good, good!” Topper chuckled. “I think we can admit amongst ourselves that our better halves don’t take well to being forgotten.”
    Colin ground his teeth. “I was not aware that my wife accompanied me.”
    That made the man much happier. “Of course, of course! You were deep asleep when you arrived and I had the men carry you up the stairs. Your lovely lady did come with you, Captain. She did indeed. She waits for you in my best private parlor. We’ll have a meal served to the two of you within the quarter hour.”
    “No,” Colin said. “I should like some time alone with my… wife.”
    He could hear the innkeeper rubbing his hands together. “Of course you do, of course you do!” he all but shouted. “Young lovers separated by war are eager to be alone.” Then he leaned closer, breathing roast beef onto Colin’s cheek. “If you’ll excuse the presumption, Captain, I could see from your wife’s face when she entered the door that she’d given you a hero’s welcome back to England!”
    Colin hand shot out and unerringly caught the innkeeper around his fat neck. “If you ever speak of my wife in such an impudent fashion again, I shall knock you into the next county.”
    The innkeeper coughed and gabbled, “I’m sure I didn’t mean the slightest presumption, sir, not in the slightest.”
    Colin let him go. “Lead me to the private parlor.” The innkeeper took his arm and he suffered it, cursing Ackerley silently. What the devil was the man doing, trotting off with some maid to a bonesetter?
    That would be the maid belonging to a wife he didn’t remember. It made sense that he couldn’t remember the maid, either.
    And there was a woman waiting for him.
    The innkeeper trundled down the corridor and turned left through an open door. Colin waited until the door closed behind Topper. Then he stood, back to the door, waiting.
    He was greeted by silence.
    This must be some sort of elaborate hoax, though to what end, he didn’t know. There was a trace of roses in the air, the scent of the woman who walked into the chamber before him.
    Roses? His heart plummeted into his boots. Could he have married Lily? Could the duke and duchess have remembered his long-ago request and paired him with Lily in an excess of patriotic zeal? Would he have gone through a marriage ceremony in a laudanum daze? Was that even possible?
    There wasn’t a sound in the room. Whoever she was, she was sitting still as a mouse. That didn’t seem like Lily. She fluttered like a butterfly here and there, unable to sit quietly, as far as he remembered.
    Still… Who else could he have married? He didn’t want to have married Lily, with every ounce of being