Thief of Broken Hearts by Louisa Cornell

Author:Louisa Cornell [Cornell, Louisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scarsdale Publishing, Ltd
Published: 2018-12-21T16:00:00+00:00

Rhiannon dropped the pasty she’d fished out of the basket onto the blanket, missing completely the pewter plate in her hand. Their wedding? He wanted to know about their wedding?

She devoted her entire attention to retrieving the pasty and putting it on the plate. Of all the things to ask. Endymion sat down stiffly across from her. At least, his posture was stiff. She did not want to meet his gaze until she had a somewhat reasonable answer to his question. An answer she might give him without the guilt she’d carried for seventeen years being written all over her face.

“Is that plate for me or do you intend to simply hold it for the duration of our picnic?”

His question set her in motion. She offered him the plate and then pulled it back. He sat on the blanket as if seated in a London dining room. Legs out, perfectly aligned and back straight as if one of Chippendale’s finest chairs supported him.

“Good Lord, Dymi,” she said as she came up on her knees and placed the plate beside her. “Have you forgotten how to sit on a blanket?”

He scowled and reached for his plate. “I beg your pardon. Oww! What was that for?”

She’d slapped his hand. “For being a stick. Take off your coat.”

“My coat?”

She grabbed the lapel and flipped it back and forth. “This coat.”

“Why?”

“Oooh!” She huffed and reached for his buttons. The coat of black superfine had been tailored to fit his form like a second skin. With a great deal of effort and entirely too much contact with his body, she wrestled him out of it and tossed it behind him. Next, she started on the buttons of his waistcoat, black with gold embroidery. At this point, he merely stared at her with an idiotic grin playing about his lips. For a man who hardly smiled, he’d perfected the art of the rakish grin.

“I don’t know why I am surprised,” she said as she removed his waistcoat and untied his neckcloth. “I daresay, you have not sat on the ground, let alone attended a picnic, since you left Cornwall. Now, that is much better.” She handed him his plate.

“I’ll have you know, I have attended any number of picnics in London.” He bit into the pasty and closed his eyes. A reaction common to anyone who tried one of Cook’s meat pasties.

“Dining al fresco involves tables and chairs and a battalion of servants. That is not a picnic,” she said and went back to emptying the basket. Pasties, sandwiches, a jug of lemonade and one of ale, pickled eggs, strawberry tarts, and more. Cook fully intended His Grace not go hungry.

“And arranging our feast is not answering my question,” he said, his green eyes studying her face as if it were a particularly difficult passage of Greek.

“Just as you did not answer mine,” she replied and bit into a strawberry tart.

He did smile then, an honest endearment of a smile.

“What?” Rhiannon made use of the serviette Cook had packed.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.