Free Stealing the Bride by Elizabeth Boyle Page A

Christmas goose, stuffed with gold.
    “That, and I’ve never had the extra money to toss about. I do so hate to disappoint you, gentlemen, but I’m a man without means.”
    In an instant, the goose that had looked so fat and tasty suddenly became as appealing as week-old mutton in July.
    “Yes, that is a problem, Templeton. No property you’d care to offer or family heirlooms to pawn off?” Cordell asked.
    Temple had a feeling the man knew both means of funding only too well. “No, all entailed and still in my grandfather’s thrifty hands.”
    “Hmm. Too bad. Perhaps the old boy will cock up his toes soon and you’ll be your own man.” The viscount chuckled and smirked at his companions.
    Temple gritted his teeth, once again reminding himself that killing Cordell outright, while a favor to Society, would only turn this already ridiculous assignment into months and months of reports and paperwork, upon which he suspected Pymm would insist.
    Not to mention the requisite duel with Cordell’s hotheaded and equally worthless brothers. He could hardly dispatch the entire lot of them because they had a horse’s ass for a sibling.
    “Be a sport,” Cordell was saying, as he eyed the cards in his hand. “Go look for her, would you? I’ve almost run out of funds, and I believe she has a tidy little purse tucked away—for emergencies or some other foolishness. God knows where it is hidden because it isn’t in her traveling bag.” He turned back to his game, and nodded to the vicar to add another card to his already precarious hand.
    So dismissed, Temple wondered if Elton was as good at forgery as he was at finding his way about the countryside on a moonless night. He’d have his adept servant add a few charges to Pymm’s writ to ensure the contemptible viscount spent the next few years cooling his heels in this little hamlet.
    Temple strode out of the inn, something niggling at the back of his spine that warned him Diana shouldn’t be left to her own devices.
    Though truly, he told himself, what ill fate could await her in Geddington? Then he saw her and wondered at the wry joke the Fates had in store for him.
    Diana meandered around the triangular base of the town’s Eleanor Cross, her gaze never leaving the trio of statues that made up the middle section of the tall, stately monument.
    He stood back for a few moments and just watched her, comparing her profile to that of the long-dead queen known for her determination and resolute heart.
    Diana and the lady had a lot in common. And that was what had his chest hammering, his gut in knots.
    Never one for conventions, she held her beribboned bonnet in one hand, and in the other, her guidebook. Her honey-blond hair sparkled in the last vestiges of sunlight. And as she tipped her head once more to gaze up at the long-lost queen, her mouth turned in a sad, lonely smile that prodded at Temple’s heart.
    There is something not right here, he told himself. If he’d run away with Diana, he certainly wouldn’t be spending the evening playing cards in some lonely inn.
    No, indeed. Why, he’d have her unbound and undressed and…
    “So you found me, Temple,” she said without even turning around.
    Her words held a second meaning that he wasn’t about to acknowledge. Any more than he wanted to continue his own silent reverie into the dangerous environs that she usually stirred inside him.
    All he could manage to say was a tongue-tied, “Aye, Diana.”
    She walked once again in a circle around the monument, her hand reaching out every so often to trail over the stone.
    Temple crossed the distance between them, putting his arm up against the statue to block her path.
    She came to a stop, her face set in an annoyed display, her blue eyes flashing in challenge. “My lord, if you are here to rescue me, you are sadly mistaken. As I said before, I’m of no mind to return to London.”
    “As I said before, I have no intention of returning you to your father.”
    Because my