The Beaumont Betrothal: Northbridge Bride Series Book 2 by D'Ansey Leigh

Author:D'Ansey, Leigh [D'Ansey, Leigh]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2019-09-07T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

Although the rain had eased to a light drizzle, Bruno was glad of the caped coat he’d borrowed from the ostler. He wondered briefly if he’d ever get used to the changeable nature of this English climate. One moment he’d be in shirt-sleeves, the next covered up against a sudden storm. A pang of homesickness struck him for the city he’d been raised in, the wide plains and rivers and mountains he’d explored and the people whose hardships he’d both shared and prospered by.

But this green landscape pulled at him. He would return to the New World but he knew England was where he belonged for the foreseeable future. He’d ridden through the rolling hills and walked the corridors and towers of Enderby, breathed in the history, and sworn allegiance to these lands and to the ancestors he did not know and the descendants who would succeed him.

And Sophia Cranston, who could have born these descendants, belonged to his brother. He cast a glance sideways but all he could see of her through the window of the carriage was the shape of her cheek against her bonnet and a froth of dark curls about her collar.

He dragged his eyes away and rubbed the scar on his face, relishing the ache for it served as a sharp reminder of all the reasons he must set himself apart from her. Her appeal for him had not lessened in the days and weeks since he’d first set sight on her but he’d convinced himself he could trammel that attraction into a concern that was purely brotherly. He had committed himself to being of service to both Sophia and Freddy, fostering their happiness as a married couple and keeping their combined interests foremost in his heart.

A raindrop trickled beneath his collar and he hunched his shoulders. If only Freddy would express at least as much interest in his fiancée as he did in those dratted dogs of his. In fact, Bruno had spent a good part of the previous weeks lauding Miss Cranston’s evident virtues—her looks, her talent, her breeding, wit and elegance.

“Elegance?” Freddy had interjected, looking up from the bristle-faced bitch that pressed itself against his legs. “Looks a damn fright sometimes. That bit of cloth she had tied to her head the other day—”

“Hell’s teeth, Freddy. That’s what elegance is.” Bruno had thrust his hands into his pockets and stared out the window at the undulating hills, shapely as a woman draped across the contours of the earth. “Elegance is… it’s style and uniqueness. Not many women could look as stunning as Sophia Cranston with a random piece of fabric wound about their hair.”

“This is what you call elegance,” Freddy had answered, leaning forward to run his hand over the sculpted haunches of an aristocratic-looking greyhound.

And perhaps Freddy was more perceptive than he, Bruno, had given him credit for. Elegance was too cool, too severe a description for Sophia Cranston, he thought now, remembering how she’d glowed against the dusky, cramped interior of the village store.

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