Free A Risk Worth Taking by Laura Landon

swallowed hard. “I can be ready the day after.”
    “Very well. I suggest you say your good-byes tonight. The sooner you are away from Brentwood, the safer you will be. I will bring some carts and men in two days to move your belongings. I will also send a carriage and a chaperone to escort your sister back to school. They will arrive midmorning.”
    She opened her mouth to say something more, then realized there was nothing more to say. Freddie’s deathleft her with no other choice but to marry. It was the only way to provide for Becca.
    “I will be ready.”
    With a curt nod, Blackmoor turned, then walked to the door. Twice on his way out he reached out his hand to steady himself against the wall. When he reached his horse, he lifted himself into the saddle with an ease that belied his large stature, and rode away.
    From the drawing-room window, Anne watched him leave. Midway down the lane, he stopped, then again a little farther. Both times he reached into his jacket pocket and removed a flask. He lifted the container to his lips and took a drink.
    She shook her head. An overwhelming sense of regret and sadness filled her. She’d hoped and prayed she’d been wrong. She’d hoped she’d misinterpreted his nervousness, his perspiration, and his trembling hands for something other than what she feared it meant. But she hadn’t.
    Griffin Blackmoor was a drunkard.
    Just like her father.

Chapter 7

    A nne stared out the window of the carriage Griffin Blackmoor had brought for her, and tried to calm her taut nerves. The voice that controlled her fear screamed to have the driver stop so she could go home. Until she remembered—she no longer had a home.
    She swallowed hard and took a deep breath. Each London town house they passed meant they were that much closer to their destination. That much closer to beginning her search for the husband she didn’t want. She thought of Becca, already back at Lady Agnes’s School for Young Women, and realized she had no choice. Her sister’s future depended on her.
    Their good-bye had been teary and filled with trepidation, but the look of excitement on Becca’s face when she climbed aboard the carriage showed how eager she was to return to her friends. It would be a relief to leave behind the gloom that had blanketed them since Freddie’s death.
    Anne’s carriage slowed, then turned another corner and slowed even more. They must be near their destination. Anne looked out the window again, not at the grand houses but at the man riding beside her carriage—the man whose offer had saved her, even if his motives consistedmostly of fulfilling Freddie’s dying request and easing the guilt she saw eating away at him.
    A strange warmth settled in the pit of her stomach, a confusing emotion she’d first experienced the day of Freddie’s funeral. Something she refused to put much thought to. She attributed it to Griffin Blackmoor’s physical features.
    He was inordinately handsome. He sat a horse with magnificent grace, his powerful arms and legs guiding the large beast with seemingly little effort. The chiseled planes of his face only added to an underlying strength she couldn’t help but notice, while his dark hair and sky-blue eyes gave him an even more pronounced air of mystery and unapproachability.
    There was a firm set to his features, a look of stern determination. As unwavering as the expression she imagined on soldiers before a battle, a look that matched the hollow emptiness in his gaze. A look she only expected to see on a man facing the gallows.
    He lifted the flask she’d seen him drink from often on their journey, and tipped it high. It must be empty. With a painful expression, almost one of regret, he stared at the container, then threw it into the bushes.
    The carriage came to a halt in front of a town house in the better part of London, and he lowered himself to the ground. He wasn’t drunk, and yet he wasn’t exactly sober.
    A servant opened the carriage door,