Make Me Love You by Johanna Lindsey Page A

might want to escape every so often and could use the excuse of visiting your parents to do so. In any case, I assumed we would return to Leicestershire at some point. But you realize, no matter where we go, we still might be found. Your parents have too much to lose. They will send an army of lackeys after you.”
    “But it will be too late. The Regent will have taken what he will take.”
    Alfreda raised a brow. “Do you really want to do that to them? To your mother?”
    “She doesn’t care about me,” Brooke insisted. “Why should I care about her?”
    “Because you do. And because she does. I know you don’t like to hear it, poppet, but she does. I don’t know why she’s chosen to hide it, but she must have good reason. Did you never consider it might be because of your father? When a man decides something has no value, everyone around him must agree with him or risk punishment.”
    Brooke shook her head, unconvinced. The times Harriet had acted like a real mother were too few. Although she’d gotten quite involved in preparing for Brooke’s Season in London, almost as if she were looking forward to it more than Brooke, none of that made up for the years of neglect, never giving her a hug, never telling her “I love you.” Brooke couldn’t even eat dinner with her parents! But Robert certainly did. Still, Alfreda was right. She couldn’t do that to her mother. It would break her own heart.
    Out of options, she sighed dismally. “I’ll move up to that tower room so I will be reminded every moment I’m in it that it’s where my future husband wanted me to be.”
    Alfreda tsked. “We don’t pout.”
    “You don’t. I might find it refreshing.”
    “Pouting hurts you more’n it hurts anyone else. We don’t pout. But you can make him love you.”
    Brooke sat up. Her mother had said the same thing. Make him love you, precious. Make him fall deeply in love and you will have a good life with him.
    “You suggested a pretend marriage earlier,” Brooke reminded Alfreda. “Love wouldn’t be a part of that.”
    Alfreda shrugged. “You need to reach common ground with him so he stops pushing you away. He might find an arrangement or a bargain acceptable, and that might get you a truce. Then you can move in for the kill.”
    Brooke burst out laughing. “I wouldn’t exactly call enticing him to love me moving in for the kill.”
    “It’s his animosity you’ll be killing. Anything is possible after that.”
    This interesting thought was a much more palatable option. She might indeed get the wolf to bargain with her if she convinced him she wasn’t going to leave no matter what. She just needed to figure out a bargain that would benefit him. It would be a way to become friends with him. Like before love. Friends before lovers. It would give her time to endear herself to him, time to get into his thoughts and then his heart. It would certainly be a challenge, probably the biggest of her life, but if she set her mind to it . . .
    But one obstacle she might not be able to surmount. What if she couldn’t get past her dislike of him? Yet she was adept at hiding her feelings . . . well, she was before she came here! But she could get that under control. So as long as he didn’t guess that she didn’t like him. . . .

Chapter Sixteen

    A FTER ALFREDA HELPED BROOKE out of her traveling garb and into a simple day dress, the maid immediately went off to her room in the servants’ wing to get the herbs they needed for Dominic.
    Brooke hadn’t expected her first day at Rothdale to be so trying and fraught with unpleasantness, surprises, and anger. She supposed there were a few bright spots, though. The greenhouse was not being used, so she and Alfreda could cultivate their herb garden there. She had a pretty bedroom and no one had yet come to tell her to get out of it. She walked over to a window. She found the views of the lovely park and the two horse pastures soothing. Oh, and she’d gotten in the