Rake's Wager by Miranda Jarrett

Author:Miranda Jarrett [Jarrett, Miranda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9780263851694
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2005-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Richard climbed the hotel’s stone steps two at a time, muttering and swearing to himself. The luggage was secured on the carriage, the horses were ready, and God knows they were already leaving town hours later than he’d first planned. So where in blazes was Cassia?

She wasn’t in the front hall, or the ladies’ parlor, where he risked his neck to look inside among the outraged viragos and dowagers, and she wasn’t in the dining room, either. His uneasiness growing, he was heading to the porter’s station to demand a search of the premises when he passed by the gentlemen’s parlor, and found her.

“Oh, Mr. Blackley, I am so glad you are here!” she said, as if there was nothing unusual about a young woman standing unescorted in a room reserved for men, with three of the said men attending her with the most besotted, worshiping expressions imaginable. “You can come settle a dispute for us.”

“Some other time, Miss Penny.” Richard reached for her arm, determined to extricate her from her worshipers as soon as possible. “Now the carriage is waiting, and it’s high time we were on our way.”

But she didn’t budge, and instead pointed toward the mounted head of a tiger that hung fiercely over the mantel. “Something like that would be very handsome and exotic and masculine to have at Greenwood. Are there tigers on Barbados? Or perhaps lions?”

“Oh, of course there are, Miss Penny,” one of her gallants answered, rocking back and forth on his heels. “Those foreign heathen places always have big cats.”

“Barbados is a Christian colony of Great Britain,” Richard said, “and being an island, its only cats are the tabbies keeping the rats away from the sugar cane. Miss Penny, come with me now.”

“Good day, gentlemen,” she said sweetly, then left the room at such a brisk pace that Richard had to hurry to catch her.

“I’m sorry to have plucked you from your admirers,” he said, “but we’re damnably late.”

“And whose fault is that?” she asked. “I was merely making use of my wait for you to observe how the public rooms are done in a hotel that caters to guests of the first order.”

“Then you can tell me every last thing you observed on our way,” he said as they walked past the footman holding the front door open. “God only knows what time we’ll finally make Greenwood.”

But she’d stopped dead on the steps, gazing wide-eyed at his carriage. It was a handsome carriage, dark-blue picked out in gold, with a team of matching grays with polished brasses, but he was still secretly pleased that he’d managed to earn such a reaction. She hadn’t said a word at the countinghouse, or let out even a breath of amazement over how he owned a half-dozen merchantmen, with shares in many more. For a parson’s daughter born in the country, she was deucedly hard to impress.

She nodded, and smiled, as if the sight alone of the blue carriage was enough to give her pleasure. “I must confess, Mr.

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.