Free Married in Haste by Cathy Maxwell Page B

papers.”
    “Quite right!” her brother cut in. “Although I will have the announcement posted in the morning papers. I want everything proper,” he added with false cheeriness.
    “Then if you will excuse me, I will return at five.” Brenn crossed the room to her. “Miss Hamlin.” He held out his hand.
    Her reluctance was clear as she placed her fingers in his. What did she think he was going to do? Gobble her up?
    The idea had merit.
    Gallantly, he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her fingertips. “Until five.”
    She nodded. He would have paid every coin in his pocket to know her thoughts.

    “By the by,” Hamlin said, oblivious to the tension in the room, “Stella tells me we are attending Lord and Lady Ottley’s musicale this evening. It’s an Italian soprano, nothing special. We wish you to join our party.”
    “Lord Ottley? Is he not the sponsor of that agricultural bill in Parliament?”
    “I suppose so. I really don’t know,” Hamlin said. “I don’t pay attention to politics myself.”
    Brenn thought a man who didn’t pay attention to politics and the governing of his country was an idiot, but he kept that opinion to himself. “I would be honored to be your guest.”
    “Good. Come here at nine. We’ll have a quiet supper and then go to the musicale together.”
    As Brenn took his leave he couldn’t resist one backward glance at his bride-to-be. She stood perfectly still, her gaze fixated on a point outside the window.
    He wondered again who the father of her baby was.
    Leaving the house, he decided that always doing the honorable thing was damn hard business.

    “It was…” Tess paused, at a loss for words. “It was animal!”
    She and Anne sat in the privacy of Anne’s small bedroom under the eaves of her aunt’s house. It was a safe, familiar place. Tess had hurried there as soon as the door had closed behind Lord Merton.
    “Animal?” Anne repeated. “A kiss?”
    “Yes,” Tess said desperately. “Worse, I can’t believe I behaved so brazenly.”
    “I can’t believe he just reached out and grabbed you!”
    “Oh, he did,” Tess swore fervently. “He acted like he was angry about something.” For a moment, she was tempted to divulge her guilty secret concerning her loss of fortune, but then she thought differently.
    She couldn’t stand the thought of anyone pitying her, even Anne.
    Instead, she rolled off the bed and acted out the chain of events. “He took my arms with both hands and then, before I realized what was happening, he kissed me.”
    “Oh, dear,” Anne said breathlessly.
    “Yes,” Tess agreed. “At first, I fought him. I thought I was going to be ravished, right there in my own home with my brother close at hand.”
    “And were you?”
    “No.” She dropped her arms to her side. “Instead, I kissed him back.”
    “You?”
    Tess nodded.
    “But you don’t like to kiss.”
    That was true. “I’ve found it sloppy and degrading…but,” she added in a whisper, “it wasn’t disgusting when he kissed me.”
    “What was it like?” Anne asked, wide-eyed.
    Tess searched her mind for the right word and settled on “Possessive.”
    “What did you do after that?”
    “Nothing,” Tess admitted helplessly. “My mind was so jumbled, I could barely string two thoughts together. And he kept watching me…”
    She sat back on the bed, crushing a feather pillow tightly against her stomach. She was losing control.
    Whether she wished it or not, she was going to marry a man who had the power to make her feel excited and frightened and giddy all at one time. “Anne, what happens between a man and a woman once they marry?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You know.” Tess waved her hand in the air anxiously. “What happens on the wedding night.”
    Anne sank down on the bed. “I thought you knew.”
    “Knew what?”
    Shaking her head, Anne confessed, “I don’t know. Tess, living with my aunt, I might as well be in a nunnery. Whenever I’ve dared to