Candlelight Christmas Kisses: Captain Moorcroft's Christmas Bride\Governess Under the Mistletoe by Anne Herries

Author:Anne Herries
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2014-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWO

WEARILY slitting his eyes as close to shut as he could manage against the constant onslaught of driving snow without actually closing them and riding into a tree, Peter decided he was seeing things now to add to his miseries. He swiped an impatient hand across his face in the snow-blurred twilight and dared open his tired eyes a little wider to look harder. But the illusion was gone from the lighted window he could see ahead of him, so maybe he was still sane.

He let out a deep sigh of weary relief at being spared delusions and decided he might be a mere ten feet from sanctuary or even half a mile for all he could see through the shifting flurries of snow that seemed one minute as wild as dervishes and the next as soft and life-stealing as death itself. He shook his head and muttered encouragement in Hannibal’s flicked-back ears, for the poor beast had borne him as stalwartly through this white nightmare as a docile cart horse instead of the high-bred hunter he really was.

So why had memories of Sophie Bonet come back to haunt him at such a desperate moment? He would have thought a man might see angels if he was on the verge of death, not hard-hearted, self-serving little devils like that one had proved herself to be. Once upon a time he had thought he loved her, of course, but he’d been a young fool who had known so little of the world that he looked back on his younger self with pity. He should have been locked up for his own protection until he had grown enough common sense to see the devious little adventuress for what she was. It must be eight years since he’d last set eyes on her, but exotic rumours of her fate since she had marched out of Holm Park for the last time, with her pert little nose in the air and a couple of expensive bandboxes in her hands, were legion.

He liked best the one about her setting up as a pirate queen in the unsuspecting Caribbean and charming all the renegades into running about doing her bidding. Once upon a time, Sophie Bonet had been his friend, almost a relative and an intrepid playmate. That Sophie had been so eager for life and adventure that he’d almost forgotten she was a girl and had led her into all sorts of unsuitable mischief. He smiled wryly at the thought of that wild young version of Sophie Bonet taking on the world and winning, then wondered what he’d seen to recall her so strongly to mind that he could almost hear her voice in his freezing ears.

‘I’m getting lost in more ways than one, Hannibal old boy,’ he muttered, and as his gallant mount seemed to like the sound of anything other than eerie, snowbound silence or howling, snow-laden gusts of wind, he murmured a commentary on his own folly in giving in to Edwina’s pleas to get her to her wedding despite the fact going on in such weather was madness.

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