Free A Kiss to Remember by Teresa Medeiros Page B

in the eyes of God, and as far as I’m concerned, His are the only eyes that matter.”
    Without a word, Cookie rose from the bale of hay and started toward the door.
    Laura had managed to hold on to her composure through Dower’s grumbling and George’s skepticism, but if good-hearted Cookie denounced her again, she feared she might just burst into tears. “Where are you going?”
    Cookie turned, her broad face wreathed in a tender smile. “If I’m to stitch you up a weddin’ dress before your birthday, I can’t be dawdlin’ in the barn all day with the cows and the chicks. I do believe Lady Eleanor left some white crepe stashed away in the attic for just this day.” The maidservant dabbed at her damp eyes with the hem of her apron. “I wish our dear lady was goin’ to be here to see you stand up at the altar with that handsome young buck. It was one of her fondest dreams, you know.”
    Laura blinked back her own tears. There was only one dream Lady Eleanor would have held more dear— the dream that someday her son would come striding down the lane and into her arms.
    Laura linked her arm in Cookie’s. “Do you think she would mind if we filched a bit of Brussels lace off the curtains in the drawing room to trim the sleeves?”
    As she and Cookie drifted out of the barn, chattering about posies and bride cakes, Dower trailed after them, shaking his head in disgust. “They should a’ stayed in the barn where they belonged. There’s nothin’ loik a weddin’ to make a perfectly sensible gel go all calf eyed.”
    A long, silent moment passed after the others had left. Then George exploded into motion, springing to his feet and lashing out to kick a tin feed bucket. Grainsprayed through the air in a golden arc. The bucket landed with a metallic clang that echoed like a lightning strike in the taut stillness of the barn.
    “She says she’s doing it for herself, but she’s not!” he shouted. “She’s doing it for us. She’s doing it because I’m too damn young to provide for my own family.” He collapsed against a post, his hands clenched into impotent fists. “God in heaven, if I were only half a man …”
    Above him, Lottie sat cross-legged in the hay with no sign of the histrionics he had expected. Her little round face was pale and still, her voice oddly calm. “We simply can’t allow her to do it. We can’t allow her to sacrifice her virtue on our behalf. She deserves better than to endure a fate worse than death at some scoundrel’s hands.”
    “You didn’t notice the way she was looking at him,” George said darkly. “It was almost as if she might welcome the sort of death those hands could bring.”
    “That’s easy for you to say. You’re not a woman.”
    “Neither are you,” he reminded her.
    Lottie rested her chin on one hand. “If Laura marries before her twenty-first birthday, she inherits the manor.”
    “That does seem to be the point of all this lunacy,” George agreed, wary of his sister’s calculating expression.
    “But there was nothing in Lady Eleanor’s will that said she has to
stay
married.”
    “You know as well as I do that Laura would never survive the disgrace of a divorce.”
    “Who said anything about a divorce?” Lottie stroked the puff of gray fur in her lap. “In Miss Radcliffe’s novels, the villain who seeks to compromisethe heroine’s virtue always meets with an untimely demise before he can succeed.”
    Planting his hands on his hips, George glared up at her. “Why, Carlotta Anne Fairleigh, you’re not thinking of murdering that poor wretch, are you? Regardless of what you read in those silly books of yours, you can’t just go around killing people because they don’t fancy cats. Or you.”
    “And why not?” Lottie retorted. “Just consider the advantages. As a widow, Laura would reap all the benefits of marriage, but suffer none of the constraints. And if her groom should happen to meet with just such an untimely accident
after
the