How to Bed a Baron by Christy English

Author:Christy English
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: 0
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

Arthur did not get a word in edgewise throughout the entire meal. Which was just as well, since he

had swallowed his tongue.

His mother had served his favorite dishes, roast quail braised in rosemary and butter, honeyed

carrots and well cooked greens. He ate every morsel on his plate, knowing that while she had not

cooked the meal herself, his mother had overseen every aspect of it.

He listened to her, trying to drink in her presence, to record it in his memory for the time when

she was gone. He knew that she was ill, though he had no idea how ill, nor how long she might linger

with him. He loved his mother, but for most of his youth, he had gone his own way, studying literature,

writing sonnets that he showed no one, and meeting with the Royal Society to hear the work of other

men.

He was a dutiful son and visited home as much as he might, especially over the holidays and

in summer, but Arthur Farleigh had lived his own life apart from the last of his family. And now that

his mother was dying, he regretted those years, wishing he had come home more.

He could not undo those years, but he could give her a daughter-in-law.

Arthur knew he should apply his keen mind to the problem of finding another bride in the

height of summer, when all and sundry had no doubt already left London at the close of the Season. He

racked his brain for friends he might impose on, house parties he could attend where he might find

some quiet, suitable, biddable girl to bring home. He tried to plan this course of action, to strategize

his future as if he were going to war, but he found that with Serena Davenport in the room, he could

not formulate a thought of anyone but her.

When he tried to speak, he found that he could not. He had loved this woman all his life, but

he had thought his memory had painted her in too brilliant hues, that no one alive could be larger than

life as she was in his memory. But as he sat at table with her, he knew that he had been wrong. If

anything, she was more vibrant, more brilliant, than any memory could ever have been, more than any

woman he had ever known.

Never at a loss for words, Serena seemed not at all chagrined that his mother did not

remember her, but instead seemed to accept blindly the fiction they had concocted that she was

Catherine Middlebrook, debutante from Devon. He listened, as his mother did, to stories this new

“Catherine” regaled them with, tales about a long-lost cousin who had gone on a dig in the wilds of

Italy, hunting Etruscan artifacts with her father. She told entertaining, if hair-raising feats of derring-

do that her “cousin” and “uncle” had undertaken to do their best to deceive the French and the

Germans alike, and to retain some artifacts and remnants of the past for King and Country.

His mother’s pale face was flushed with laughter, and Arthur found himself wishing that they

were to marry in truth.

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