Free Indiscreet by Mary Balogh Page A

the fact that he had caused that feeling. And that he had caused Mrs. Adams to become suspicious. He could leave within the next few weeks. She had to live on here.
    But as she got to her feet and buttoned her cloak and tied the ribbons of her bonnet beneath her chin, she was not feeling altogether upset. At least she had seen him again after last evening. More than that, she had talked with him. It was over now, thatfirst awkward meeting after the embarrassment and humiliation of the night before. From now on it would be easier.
    How dull your life must be, Mrs. Winters.
    She could hear his voice again, bored, insolent, telling her what her life was like. Just as if he knew. Or thought he knew. He knew nothing about her. And that was the way it would remain.
    She hurried through the French windows and was soon striding down the driveway in the direction of the village and home.
    How dared he presume to judge her life.
    Did he know anything of her life? Anything of the struggles and pain and heartache? The agony? Just so that she could achieve the peace of the life she had now? And the dullness.
    It had been a hard-won dullness.
    A dullness that was infinitely preferable to what had gone before.
    And yet he had spoken it as an accusation. With contempt.
How dull your life must be, Mrs. Winters.
    She turned her mind determinedly to home—her precious little cottage—and to Toby, who would be bursting with energy after his morning alone. She would take him for a long walk this afternoon. Perhaps it was a dull life she led, but it was hers, as she had told him, and she would continue with it.
    And she would be thankful that it was only dull.
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    HE had spent what remained of the morning ruining Ellen Hudson’s enjoyment of the puppies. Not that he had intended any such thing. He had escorted her to the stable block and had hoveredin the background while she bent over the puppies, picking them up and cuddling them and cooing over them one by one. But he had felt her self-consciousness, her conviction that he was bored, that he was laughing at her raptures.
    They were terrier pups. It was easy to guess where the fierce Toby had come from.
    He had no objection to puppies. He could even concede that they were pretty little things with their fat little bodies and stubby legs and little snub noses. He had even been known on occasion to pick up a pup and cradle it on his palm while smoothing a finger between its ears.
    But it had irritated him to know that Ellen would have been far happier and more relaxed without his presence but that courtesy kept him hovering so that he might beat off ardent grooms with lascivious intents and give her an arm to lean on during the return journey to the house.
    By the time they all sat down for luncheon, he felt that he had suffered enough for one day as a victim of a determined matchmaker. Clarissa was arranging a walk for the afternoon, the weather being too fine to waste. Fortunately—very fortunately—Claude could not participate since there was a distant tenant he felt obliged to call upon.
    Viscount Rawleigh decided that he must accompany his brother.
    â€œWe see each other so rarely these days,” he explained with a smile to a clearly disappointed Clarissa. “But the bond between us continues to be unusually close. It has something to do with the fact that we are twins, you know.”
    â€œThat was not quite the wise thing to say to Clarissa,” his brother said later when they were riding away from the stables, blessedly alone together. “She has always been a little jealous of you, Rex. When you were in Spain and then in Belgium, I worried so much that I sometimes made myself ill. And it always seemed to come on me just at a time we would learn later something unpleasant really had been happening to you. That time you were carried from the field unconscious from loss of blood, for example. I knew it, I swear, a