Martha Schroeder Read Online Free

the minute she knew his history. He tried to imagine telling her, but he saw those candid hazel eyes darken, her finely carved lips tighten with distaste.
    Yet he wanted to stay here, deep in the country, surrounded by peace. He wanted a place of his own, a family of his own. In just a few hours, Hedgemere had struck a chord that had never resonated before.
    But was this the only way he could get a home? Surely, if Gerald was correct about the straits in which Lady Meg now found herself, he could simply purchase Hedgemere and proceed to spend his life improving it.
    But that would not be enough.
    Lady Meg, to her credit, made no pretense of caring for him. She had looked him over, seen how he behaved in her drawing room—a shabby apartment, James noted, that could use an infusion of money to provide new draperies and chair covers and carpeting.
    It seemed that one way and another, he and Lady Meg were testing each other, to see if there might be enough tastes and talents and needs shared between them to form the basis of a marriage.
    James smiled, remembering her hair, how softly it had gleamed, and those level hazel eyes. And her mouth. Perhaps Gerald Mattingly was not as foolish as James had thought at first.
     

Chapter Three
     
    Meg awoke the next morning feeling as if she had spent the night harried by a pack of demon hounds. She had tossed and turned, waking more than once to face the question that had dominated her dreams: What was she to do with her life? Marry a man she had scarcely met, and one who seemed possessed of a temperament that was both proud and private? A very difficult man to know . .. and to live with? To…To have children with?
    Her mind swerved away from the thought. She frowned at her reflection in the mirror. This would not do. Margaret Enfield did not fight shy. She could throw her heart over any fence, and she would take this one with the same courage.
    To keep what she loved, she would have to ride into the unknown, into a relationship she knew nothing about, with a man she feared she would never know. A man she found ... not unattractive. Could she do it? She tested her resolve.
    Yes, yes. She could. Very well, then!
    She would marry James Sheridan.
    Sometimes Meg found that decisions came to her out of the blue, seeming as firm as if they had always been there. Although she prided herself on being a practical, sensible person, without a romantic bone in her body, she sometimes reached important decisions by a sort of inexplicable, somehow mystical process. She had almost hoped that this decision would come to her in that way.
    But this was not such a decision. Apprehension—she would not call it fear—swept over her in waves. No, she couldn’t do it. Better a tiny, cramped life in Harrowgate than intimacy with Captain James Sheridan.
    Meg grimaced and shook her head. What kind of craven was she? A safe little impoverished life was not for her. She would dare to venture into the biggest mystery life had to offer-— a relationship between a man and a woman. It terrified her, but that was all the more reason why she must do it.
    A line from Shakespeare that Annis had given her to memorize years before came back to her. “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” She couldn’t remember the rest of it, or what play it was from, but she whispered it to herself.
    She would take that tide at the flood. She would marry James Sheridan.
    * * * *
    “Annis,” Meg said as she entered the dining room and saw her companion, “I have decided to marry Captain Sheridan.”
    “What!” A masculine voice answered. “Do you not think you should wait until you are asked before you say yes?” After the first frozen moment of horror, Meg realized it was not Captain Sheridan who spoke.
    “Gerald, what are you doing here?” Meg wasn’t really surprised to see him so early. Gerald often rode over to take breakfast with them when he was home.
    “We decided