Rules for Reforming a Rake by Meara Platt

Author:Meara Platt [Platt, Meara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Booktrope
Published: 2015-05-21T06:00:00+00:00

***

Daisy gazed at him with her sad, beautiful eyes. “I know you’re not. I was mad to hope even for an instant that you were. Forget everything I just said.”

“But will you?”

“Yes,” she said, sounding quite unconvinced. “Please let me go. I have to saddle Brutus.”

“I’ve already saddled him for you,” Gabriel said, struggling to maintain his composure, to contain the ache in his heart that was as raw as an open wound. He really needed to kiss Daisy, desperately and deeply. He needed to lift her into his arms, carry her onto the freshly cut hay and bury himself inside her soft body.

Daisy needed to be protected from him because that damn vow—no broken hearts, no grieving widows—would be broken if she didn’t stop just being Daisy. No matter how foolish she’d been to enter that garden alone, she’d done it for him.

She cared for him.

She believed in him.

Here she stood, practically dressed in rags and sniffling like a street urchin, and all he could think of was how beautiful she looked and how badly he wanted her.

“Laurel’s beast allowed you near him?” she asked, interrupting the thoughts he was desperate to hide from her. “How did you manage it?”

Gabriel moved away from her and strode to the temperamental stallion, approaching him carefully because Brutus enjoyed going after strangers and pounding them with his massive hooves if they dared come too close. The beast had almost killed Graelem, but that unfortunate encounter had led to his cousin meeting Laurel, so Graelem considered himself coming out ahead. A beautiful wife that he loved deeply in exchange for a broken leg.

A badly broken leg that had acted up today. For that reason, Graelem had summoned him and asked for the favor of accompanying Daisy on her morning ride. Or had Graelem purposely schemed to throw him and Daisy together as much as possible before he left for France?

Hell.

Brutus was another problem. Handling the beast had been a challenge, but one he had mastered. He and Brutus were arrogant males and understood each other.

Handling Daisy was quite another matter—one didn’t handle her so much as simply watch over her and try to hold her back whenever those compassionate instincts got the better of her. But love her?

That was out of the question.

He couldn’t risk his mission, not even for her. “I’ll tell you how I managed Brutus while we ride to the park. It’s getting late and he’s restless.”

Daisy tucked her long, black braid securely under her cap and then glanced at the open stable door and the rays of sunlight beginning to poke through the morning mist. “My family doesn’t know I’m helping Laurel while her groom is ill.”

“After last night’s incident,” he said, maintaining a casual tone despite the unbearable tension between them, “I’m surprised they haven’t placed armed guards outside your door.”

“They would have, had Uncle George mentioned that he’d found us together in the Hastings garden. I don’t know why he didn’t. Unless he trusts you.” She sighed. “I doubt he trusts me.

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