A Dangerous Love by Sabrina Jeffries Page A

end.”
    By God, these sisters were particular about their husbands. He began to understand how they’d achieved their spinsterhood. “I take it she shares your aversion to free traders.”
    “No. To tell the truth, I don’t think she cares about that. It’s simply that…well…Mr. Knighton seems to frighten her.”
    “Frighten her? Why, Da—…Knighton would never hurt a woman.”
    “I’m afraid logic doesn’t enter into it with Juliet. She’s only seventeen, you know.”
    He mused a moment. “She does seem timid.”
    “Exactly! She’s very shy and petite, and I think his size alarms her.”
    That he could certainly believe. Daniel’s size alarmed half the women Griff knew—though they generally lost their alarm when Daniel turned his Irish charm on them. “What of Lady Helena? Wouldn’t she marry my employer to ensure you could all continue at Swan Park in perpetuity?”
    She shook her head sadly. “Helena’s experiences with suitors have been unhappy, I’m afraid. One man in particular—a Lord Farnsworth—thought to marry her for her money despite her lameness. They were engaged, but he jilted her when he discovered Papa was telling the truth about her pitiful dowry.”

    “That’s detestable!”
    She favored him with an approving look. “It is, isn’t it? I’ve tried to tell her that he was merely one scoundrel, but she remains unconvinced. Especially since a number of men have disdained her for her lameness. She’s too disillusioned with men to consider marriage to Mr. Knighton. Though she may wish to live here, I don’t think she’d marry to ensure it.”
    “And we’ve already established why you wouldn’t marry to save the estate. Besides, you want to be an actress, don’t you?”
    “Indeed I do.” She tossed her head back proudly.
    “You’d throw all this away to go on the stage.” He could still hardly believe it.
    “Why not, if it’s what I want?”
    “Because you don’t know the true nature of what you want,” he snapped. “It’s a degrading profession. Actresses work long into the night for little pay and less respect. They’re regularly accosted by men who consider them barely better than whores, and they don’t even have the luxury of a secure living, for they might be booed off the stage after their first performance, never to be allowed to return.”
    “So you’ve been an actress?” she said sarcastically. “You speak so familiarly about that life I can only assume you’ve lived it.”
    Saucy witch. “I don’t have to live it to know what it’s like. I go to the theater.”
    “As do I. Yet my impression of an actress’s life differs markedly from yours. Fancy that.”
    “You go to the theater in a provincial town; it’s not the same in London. I assume that you mean to go on the stage in London.”
    “Of course.” She tipped her nose up. “As my mother did.”

    He’d forgotten that the late countess had been an actress. That explained where Lady Rosalind had gotten the fool notion to be one.
    “By the way,” she went on, “Mama never spoke of it as a degrading profession. I believe she regarded it rather fondly.”
    “It’s easy to regard something fondly when you’re well out of it,” he growled.
    “Oh? Do you regard your childhood in the workhouse fondly?” She shot him a cat-in-the-cream smile.
    He met it with a cold glance. “It’s exactly because I’ve been treated like a pariah for my background and profession that I know you wouldn’t like the theater. You were raised for something better, whether you accept it or not.”
    If anyone knew what it was like to be raised for something better and denied it, he did. Knighton Trading had come hard-won, and he’d cut his ties to the tricky world of smugglers as soon as he’d gained enough success to manage it.
    “So you think I’d be better off marrying your employer?” she asked archly.
    “Of course! An innocent like you throwing away Swan Park for the bawdy house of the