Bride By Mistake by Anne Gracie

Author:Anne Gracie [Gracie, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101552490
Publisher: Berkley Sensation
Published: 2012-01-02T22:00:00+00:00

Eleven

They rode in silence for some miles, then stopped beside a stream for lunch. The landlady had loaded them up with food for their journey: wine, bread, ham, thick wedges of pepper and potato omelette, half a chicken, and some oranges. They attacked the feast with zeal and, afterward, lay in the sun, soaking it up.

Luke had decreed they’d move on in half an hour. Now he regretted saying so.

Isabella lay on her back in the grass, one knee bent, the other leg resting across it in a boyish pose. Her breeches and boots were clearly visible, but since there was nobody else to see, Luke didn’t mind.

In fact, he wouldn’t mind baring a little more of her. He got up, stretched, and sat down beside her.

“If you were any kind of civilized man, we could have a proper siesta,” Isabella murmured sleepily.

“No rest for the wicked,” he murmured, watching her leg rock slowly back and forth. He remembered the way she’d trembled at his touch.

He rolled over onto his front, ending up lying thigh to thigh with her. “I know something better than a siesta,” he murmured and stretched a lazy hand toward the buttons of her jerkin.

She pushed his hand off and moved a little farther away.

Shy, Luke thought. Perhaps it was too soon in the marriage to think about making love in the open air. “Tell me about the breeches.”

“What about them?”

“You said Reverend Mother let you outside the convent dressed as a boy. Why?”

She let out a huff of amusement. “She didn’t precisely let me, not at first.” She wriggled around so they were facing each other and regarded him with a look of rueful mischief he was beginning to recognize. “I used to sneak out.”

His lips twitched. “Why do I find myself strangely unsurprised?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Well, I hate the feeling of being shut in. And the convent was built to keep people out, not keep them in—the nuns want to be there. And some of the girls who are educated there would make valuable hostages. So it’s not a prison. But it was for me.”

Eight years, he thought.

“At first I used to go out just for an hour or so—”

“Doing what?”

“Oh, just sitting and breathing in the night, looking at the stars, or, if there was moonlight, walking and running. You’re not allowed to run in a convent—‘Glide, young ladies, glide!’  ” she mimicked. “It was easy, because I didn’t sleep in the dormitory with the other girls, so nobody noticed if I wasn’t in my bed.”

“So how did Reverend Mother find out?”

“It wasn’t for ages, and it was all my own fault. Food got very scarce during the war. The convent was down to bare bones, and I was starving and sick of having nothing to eat except watery soup with three lentils and a weed in it. So I started setting traps.”

“Traps?”

“Snares. Papa taught me to live off the land.” She paused. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

He murmured something polite, but she wasn’t deceived.

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