Free Bride By Mistake by Anne Gracíe

life by the solid reality of his presence.
    She devoured him with her eyes. Lieutenant Ripton, her Lieutenant Ripton, was here, come for her at long last. He hadn’t forgotten her. He was here.
    “You’re all grown up,” he said, his gaze dark upon her, and she suddenly remembered his long, long eyelashes and how it wasn’t fair that a man should have such lashes. They made her breathless, those lashes…
    Her secret girlhood hopes and dreams stirred again within her, returning to life like flowers lain hidden and dormant through the bitter snows of winter, sprouting new, tender shoots, unfurling petals to the sun.
    His dark gaze ran over her, taking her in as she’d taken him in. What was he thinking? Did he like what he saw? And what did he see?
    She wished again she had a proper dress that fitted, one she liked instead of something fussy and elaborate, covered in frills. She’d had to wear one of Paloma’s dresses; all the others were too short.
    She tried to think of something to say, something clever or interesting, something to make this tall, grave man look at her, see
her
, not the silly dressed-up doll the girls had made of her.
    “How was… How was your war?” she said, and she groaned inwardly at the gaucheness of the question. If only she could go back out and start this whole meeting over.
    His gaze shifted, and he glanced toward the window to thecourtyard. “As you see, I survived.” Suddenly there was a faint chill in the room.
    So much for that topic, she thought. She should ask about his trip. People did when someone had made a long, arduous journey.
    He really was a stranger. She’d been thinking she knew him because he’d lived in her dreams so long, but this man was not her handsome prince, the Lieutenant Ripton of her dreams. He was someone else, a cold, reserved stranger. She knew nothing about this Lieutenant Ripton. And he’d come to take her away.
    “Why now?” The words popped out without thinking.
    “Isa
bella
,” Reverend Mother said in a repressive tone.
    “I beg your pardon?” Lieutenant Ripton gave her a cool, steady look that was meant, she was suddenly sure, to make her retract the question, to change the subject.
    The look annoyed her. Particularly coming from eyes with such long, beautiful lashes. Eyes like that had no business giving such cold glances.
    She opened her mouth.
    “Isabella, that’s enough,” Reverend Mother said in a warning voice, accompanied by her famous Quelling Stare. It usually reduced Isabella and every other girl in the convent to abashed silence.
    But Isabella was a schoolgirl no longer. This was her husband, and she had a right to know why he’d left her in the convent for eight interminable years, and why, long after she’d given up all hope of seeing him again, he’d suddenly turned up.
    “Why did you come for me now, Lieutenant Ripton?”
    “Lieutenant Ripton no longer. I sold out of the army as a captain,” he corrected her. “And the year before last, I inherited my uncle’s title and estates and became Lord Ripton. Which means you are now Lady Ripton.”
    She turned the information over in her mind. It wasn’t what she’d asked him. “Yet for the last eight years I’ve had no word from you. The war has been over for several years, so why wait until now to come for me?” Something to do with his title, perhaps? A service to the Crown? A wound thattook some years to heal? Though he looked in perfect physical condition.
    He frowned, as if her question didn’t make sense. “Why now?” he repeated crisply. “Because I only just discovered the application for annulment was rejected.”
    The word hit her like a blow. “
Annulment?
”
    “That’s correct,
annulment
,” he repeated, as if she were somehow slow of wit.
    “You tried to annul the marriage? Our marriage? And you found you couldn’t?”
    “Correct.” He gave her a searching look, and his frown deepened.
    She stared at him. He was so matter-of-fact about it.