A Notorious Love Read Online Free

deign to bestow on her, who ought not to berate them for being untrustworthy. Who ought not to wish they could see beyond her deficiencies to the woman beneath.
    She tilted her chin up proudly. Let him think what he wished. It didn’t matter. “All the same, Will Morgan seemed far too interested in ascertaining the extent of Juliet’s and my inheritance to suit me.”
    “Even a captain must think practically when it comes to marriage.”
    “Mr. Morgan is no captain.” Now came the worst of it. “After I discovered him and Juliet gone, I went immediately to his supposed regiment. They’d never heard of him. He lied to us all from the moment he arrived.”
    Mr. Brennan rubbed his brow with slow, even strokes. She couldn’t help noticing his blunt fingers and how surprisingly clean the nails were.
    “Very strange, that,” he muttered, half to himself. “Why would he pretend to be a military man? Did he think to impress people?”
    “I don’t know. He did ask a great many questions about Papa and his estate, his friends, etcetera.”

    “You’d expect that of a man intending to marry.”
    “Yes, but doesn’t it seem rather calculated? Not to mention the alarming discovery I made as I came after them in Papa’s coach.”
    He gaped at her. “You came after them? Alone?”
    “Of course. Why do you think I’m in London?”
    Mr. Brennan stood and began to pace again, like some magnificent golden bull. It gave her shivers just watching him, the dawn light streaking his long Samson hair with gilt and lighting his gray eyes to sparkling silver. How much power lay leashed in that massive chest and those wide, square shoulders, barely constrained by the simple linen shirt and serviceable fustian frock coat?
    “What if you’d been accosted by highwaymen or footpads or any of the other unscrupulous wretches who prey on women traveling alone?” he growled. “What then? Did your father approve of this?”
    “Certainly; he had no choice. He hasn’t any more desire to see Juliet wed to a conscienceless fortune hunter than I.” The fire had died down, and she shivered beneath her thin muslin pelisse.
    Mr. Brennan caught sight of it, and his lips tightened into a grim line. Striding to the hearth, he scooped some coals into the hob grate and watched while they burst into flame. “You’re not even sure the lad is a fortune hunter. Juliet’s a fetching lass. P’raps he fell in love with her. I know you believe men don’t marry for love, but young lads do sometimes lose their hearts to pretty women.”
    His reproof taxed her temper beyond her control. “Not in this case—or else he loses it with alarming frequency.”
    I “What do you mean?”
    “He tried courting me first. I rebuffed his advances, of course—”
    “Of course,” he echoed dryly.

    She glared at his broad back. “But not before he waxed poetic about how he was ‘drawn to me from the beginning’ and how he ‘could not resist my heavenly beauty.’ Needless to say, I knew better than to fall for such false blandishments.”
    “Why assume they were false?”
    “Because men have little use for cripples, sir.”
    She regretted her bald statement the moment he swung around to face her. A gaze deep with understanding bore right through to her soul. Then it darkened, edging slowly down her body, rousing a strange, unfamiliar heat wherever it lingered.
    “Surely not all men are so foolish,” he said huskily.
    His look drove a shaft of need so deep into her that she ached with it. No man had looked at her like that since before the illness that had made her lame. Merciful heavens, she’d forgotten how some men could provoke a woman into wanting them with just a sensuous glance.
    Why must he be one of them?
    Because he was a libertine, of course. He handed out flatteries and flirtatious looks with the practiced ease of a vendor coaxing matrons to buy beauty aids. She, of all people, should know that.
    She cleared her throat and attempted to regain