Too Wilde to Wed by Eloisa James

Author:Eloisa James
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-05-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Frederick, the footman who had earlier been carrying Godfrey on his shoulders, was manning the front door. “Is my family still in the drawing room?” North asked him.

Now he could tolerate a room full of Wildes. An hour or two drifting in a punt had settled his spirits.

That, and kissing a beautiful, befreckled woman.

“I believe the ladies accompanied Her Grace upstairs,” Frederick said.

North took the stairs two at a time. Shoes. His girl needed shoes.

He found the female members of his family—his aunt, stepmother, and all four sisters—in the duchess’s bedchamber.

North happened to know that his stepmother slept with his father, though no one would mention such a disreputable fact.

Her chamber had been designed to be a reception chamber, back in the sixteenth century. An enormous bed jutted from one corner of the room, surrounded by a low railing that served as a barrier in times past. Ladies’ maids and ladies-in-waiting would have been allowed inside the railing, whereas guests could only hover outside.

Naturally, his sisters were all over the room like chickens in the hen yard.

Artie was balancing on the railing, her mother waiting to catch her. Viola, Betsy, and Joan were clustered on the bed, the first two watching Joan cut something up. The bed was scarcely large enough to hold the three of them and their skirts. Aunt Knowe was seated on a settee to the side, poking at a bedraggled piece of knitting.

They all looked up as he entered. Ophelia smiled and caught Artie when her welcoming wave toppled her from the rail. Viola hopped off the bed, came over to him, and put an arm around his waist.

As she was Ophelia’s daughter from her first marriage, Viola wasn’t really his sister. But from the moment he’d met her fourteen years before, a painfully shy child, she’d been his special girl. She had walked into the nursery holding her mother’s hand, her mouth somewhere between vulnerable and just plain terrified.

“Viola,” he said, giving her a squeeze and a kiss. “You’re what . . . sixteen now? Is that possible?”

Betsy, the oldest of his sisters, pranced over. She had turned into one of those women so beautiful they blind a man—and she knew it. Every swish of her hips said, Watch me.

North bent down and gave her a kiss as well. “I understand that you have mowed down every man in London, forced them onto their knees, and tossed them out the door.”

“That’s right,” Joan shouted from the bed. “She chews them up and spits them out.”

“You are disgusting!” Betsy told her little sister, tossing her curls again.

“No lady should marry in her first Season, and possibly not in her second either,” their aunt observed.

“I can’t get up to greet the conquering hero,” Joan said, blowing him a kiss. “I’m busy making you a present.”

“Good afternoon, shortcake,” he said, going over to the bed and dropping a kiss on her cheek. Then he saw what she was doing and an involuntary groan came to his lips.

“Miss Gray—Willa’s friend Lavinia—did it with Alaric’s prints,” Joan told him.

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