Bridegroom Wore Plaid by Grace Burrowes Page B

Genie is so disenchanted with the idea of marriage she’s willing to risk her reputation to avoid it.” That should be plain enough.
    “She’s going to drag one of my stable lads off into the trees? They’ll go willingly, most of them.”
    “Not one of your stable lads.” She counted on his canny intelligence to provide the details. A flirtation with a stable boy could be hushed up; an affair with the earl’s heir could not.
    “Bloody damn.” He sat forward much as Hester had done earlier, but on him, the posture showed his shoulders to wonderful advantage. He was in shirtsleeves and waistcoat, his cuffs turned back halfway up his forearms. “Please forgive my language. Is your family given to drama generally?”
    “No more than yours, probably. I don’t find it appealing to observe these goings on, my lord. I love my family, yet I hardly know how to assist them when they’re taking such peculiar notions.”
    She hadn’t meant to my lord him. He glanced at her in the moonlight, a simmering, considering glance that made Augusta’s hand twitch with the desire to smooth her palm over his shoulders. They bore the weight of all the family concerns, those shoulders.
    And they bore that weight alone. She shifted a little closer to him under the guise of tucking one foot under her seat. He made no move to scoot away, which meant Augusta could feel the warmth of his body heat.
    “Can you speak to your aunt?”
    “About?”
    Another glance, this one tinged with humor.
    “That’s the difficult part, isn’t it? How do you tell a grown man or a grown woman to mind their duties and stop carrying on like a milkmaid and her shepherd boy?”
    “Julia’s husband was much older than she, and I gather her marriage was merely cordial. I’m sure she feels…” How to describe the feelings that could drive a decent lady to risk her reputation for a little passion with a Scotsman?
    “She feels what, Miss Augusta?”
    “Like me.” Augusta got up, gathering the blanket around her shoulders and taking three steps out into the moonlight. “I sometimes feel like a wild creature with a broken wing, taken captive for the purpose of healing, but now my bones are knitted and the door to my cage is cracked open and I…”
    He rose. She could feel him standing behind her. “Tell me, Augusta.”
    “I can’t step through,” she said. “I forget how to step through into freedom, though I have the certain conviction that I must.”
    The ideas were forming in her head even as she spoke, and they rang true. They rang so, so true. “Julia might feel like that. A little desperate and more confused than she can say.”
    “While I feel as if my freedom is slipping from me, day by day. I don’t know how to stop it, but I have the certain conviction that I must.”
    His hand, big and warm, descended to her shoulder and gave a slow squeeze. He’d spoken quietly. Augusta feared very much he’d spoken from the heart. She covered his hand where it rested on her shoulder, hoping—perhaps as he had—that a simple touch would say what words could not. When he stepped away, she was torn between relief and disappointment.
    She turned to face him. “What would you have me do with respect to Julia? Hester noticed her lapse, and that will be a significant reproach in itself.”
    “I don’t ask that you do anything,” he said, his lips quirking. “Con and Julia are adults, and provided they use discretion, I expect them to work out their own dealings. What I ask of you is that you keep the requisite close eye on Genie. I would not have my prospective bride err when adequate supervision would spare her the misstep.”
    “She will not misstep, my lord.” And this time, Augusta used the honorific intentionally.
    “Then it falls to me to assure her our marriage will be congenial and comfortable for her, which assurances I can honestly give. It’s late, my dear. Should we be going in?”
    She nodded but made one more push at the door of her