Free The Next Best Bride by Kelly McClymer

didn't cozen you by claiming to love you beyond pearls."
    "Most certainly not!" Helena protested, and then realized how her words must sound to the gentle old man and her already worried sister. She hastened to add, "I am certain we will come to have affection for each other, in time."
    There was no offense in the shrewd eyes of the old man assessing her. "You'd be better to save your affections for your children." The marquess shook his head. "I hope you're not a silly chit who believes in all that love claptrap. I've never known the boy to love anything or anyone beyond himself."
    ''I'm certain they will find a satisfactory arrangement." Miranda frowned at the marquess, putting an arm around Helena's shoulder tightly. "Now, if you will excuse us, my lord. At the moment I need my sister's advice on a family matter."
    Helena did not understand her sister's urgency as she pulled her toward the empty library. No, it was not empty, she saw. The duke stood by the fire in the regal stance of lord of the manor. Beside him was Ros, one hip resting against the back of a chair. Both were looking directly at Helena as she entered the room.
    Miranda closed the door gently behind them, and Helena felt as if she had been trapped with wild creatures who looked tame enough but hid a penchant for mayhem. Miranda moved to stand beside her husband. She, too, said nothing, just stood looking at Helena as if she expected a confession of some sort. "What is the matter?"
    "Ros wants to go to America."
    Helena examined a small stain upon her bodice as she answered as nonchalantly as possible. "Ros has always wanted to go adventuring. America strikes her as a grand adventure, this week."
    "No. It is more than idle talk this time." Miranda shook her head and glanced at Ros, who lifted her eyebrows in a gesture of defiant resistance. Miranda gazed at Helena pleadingly. "You must help talk sense into her. Simon caught her trying to run away."
    How many times had they played out this scenario? Ros and Helena against Miranda and Simon — or back at Anderlin, against Valentine, their elder brother. This was one thing she would not miss when Ros was gone. When she began her life as Rand's countess. "She is going to America." Helena could have used a lilt at the end to make her sentence a question. But she did not.
    Miranda pressed her lips together a moment before saying, "You knew?"
    "Yes." Helena nodded, fighting back shame. Ros felt no shame, so why should she? "That is why she asked me to marry Rand in her place."
    "How could you —" Confusion clouded Miranda's features. "I thought you and Rand —"
    Helena did not want to discuss the details of the fiction that Rand had created of a couple who had been indiscreet before their wedding ceremony. Close scrutiny would tell her sister that things were not as they seemed. Quickly, she interposed, "Who has ever stopped Ros from doing what she wished?"
    Miranda might have pursued the matter, but Ros stepped in and said firmly, "I'm going to America, and if arguing with you causes me to miss my ship, I will merely find another."
    "Ros —"
    Miranda's distress must have softened Ros, for she gave up open defiance for an appeal to Miranda's understanding of her sister's true nature. "Miranda, I am not made for this society. Do you deny it?"
    "No."
    "How can you ask me to stay?"
    "Then you must go to Juliet." The duke stepped in. "You are too young to go to a strange country on your own." Helena held her breath, hoping her twin would be swayed to the idea. Ros would be safe with Juliet and R.J.
    Ros seemed startled at how quickly she had persuaded them to her side. But she was not so easily swayed to give up her idea of solo adventure. "Boston is too proper, if R.J. is anything to judge the city by."
    Miranda stared at Ros for a full minute before answering firmly, "The dowager says that the Carolinians are not so proper. I will write you a letter and she will take you in."
    Ros shook her head impatiently,