Free Not Quite Married by Betina Krahn Page A

pleasurable bit of diversion, and then a challenge.
    But he knew now that this was no game. Nothing that had just passed between them was simple or trivial, and he had a suspicion this encounter would prove anything but transitory in memory.
    He had just sold his name, his future, and perhaps his soul for a few thousand pounds. But, sharp trader that he was, he’d wheedled and cozened a bit of a bonus in that unthinkable bargain . . . his benefactor’s virtue. She had just given him the single most important thing a woman could bring to her husband in the marriage bed. And all he could think now was that he shouldn’t have taken it. He’d had others—more than he cared to count—but no other had filled him with a dread that the pleasure he had taken with her might somehow cause her grief or even harm.
    As he slid his arms into his coat, his hand plunged into a pocket that bulged with folded bank notes and gold coins. He had what he wanted, he thought grimly. Now he had to give her what she wanted. As he headed for the door, he spotted those tortoiseshell combs on the table beside the guttering candle. He stood looking down at them for a moment, then swept them into his pocket and strode out.

    BRIEN AWAKENED TO the click of a lock, and found herself lying on a strange bed in a half-laced bodice, a swirl of petticoats, and a jumble of hair. As she sat up, her muscles complained in places she didn’t want to know she possessed. Voices just outside, growing louder, made her grab her bodice together and roll up into her knees. The door creaked open and Ella slipped inside.
    “My lady!” The maid stumbled to a halt with widened eyes. “Are ye all right?”
    “I’m all right.” Brien tugged at her bodice and corset, then ran a trembling hand over her tangled hair. “I’m fine. Really. Just help me up and get me laced . . .”
    Ella hurried to her and engulfed her in a desperate hug. Instantly Brien lost her battle with surging emotions, doubts, and overwhelming memories, and held onto Ella as if she were a lifeboat on a stormy sea.
    “I’m so sorry, my lady.” Ella stroked her hair. “I was beside meself wi’ worry.”
    “It wasn’t so bad,” Brien said, struggling to regain some self-control. “He was quite gentlemanly. I’m afraid it was me who . . .”
    “Ohhh, no, ye don’t. Ye cannot go blamin’ yerself,” Ella commanded, releasing her partway and putting on a fierce expression. “Handsome bastard. Right dang’rous one, too. A man like that can make a girl do all manner o’ things.”
    Brien looked up with eyes filled with tears.
    “There is no turning back now,” she said, gripping handfuls of her skirts as the weight of what she had just done descended on her. “I’m a married woman, it seems . . . in word and in deed.”
    THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Brien took a deep breath and sent Ella a wince of a smile as she stood outside her father’s study, preparing to enter and deliver the news that she would not, could not marry Raoul Trechaud. Ella tucked one stray curl in Brien’s upswept coiffure and gave her a brave nod that could not quite mask her own anxiety.
    It had been a long, sleepless night and an even longer day. Brien had awakened at the usual time . . . in her chamber, in her own bed, in her simple nightdress . . . to her usual breakfast of berries, scones, and tea . . . served by a characteristically tart-tongued Ella. She had dressed in her usual garments, endured another of Ella’s attempts at creative coiffure, and then spent time conferring with the cook and housekeeper on the day’s menus.
    As she departed for Monsieur Lamont’s salon for the final fittings of her trousseau, she glimpsed her father reading The Times at the breakfast table, as usual.
    Riding through the streets of London’s burgeoning Mayfair district, she couldn’t help marveling that the sky was filled with a customary early summer haze, well-tended flowers overflowed window boxes on fashionable shopfronts