Read A Kiss to Remember for Free Online

demanding an answer she could not provide.
    Even though she knew she was about to commit the most damning sin of her life, Laura could not stop the tender smile from spreading across her face. “You’re mine.”

Chapter 3

    Sometimes I feel as if

you are a stranger to me.
    Over the years Laura had entertained more than one fantasy of her betrothed arriving at Arden Manor to claim her hand. Sometimes he rode a glossy black steed with a white star emblazoned on its forehead; other times he emerged from a handsome carriage decorated with the ancient coat of arms of a renowned and noble family. But never once had she pictured him draped facedown over the back of a donkey led by an ill-tempered Cockney who had been blistering her ears with curses ever since she’d dragged him away from his flocks. Fortunately, even after nearly forty years in the country, the last twenty of which had been spent serving as Lady Eleanor’s devoted man-of-all-work, Dower’s accent was still so thick Laura couldn’t make out most of them.
    As the donkey plodded into the yard, Cookie came running out of the kitchen door to greet her husband, wringing her apron in her hands. “Oh, my heavens! What on earth happened to the poor lad?”
    “Poor lad indeed!” Dower snorted. “’E’s probably some fugitive just escaped from the London gallows. ’E’ll murder us all in our beds tonight, see if he don’t.”
    “He’s not a fugitive,” Laura attempted to explain for the tenth time. “He’s a gentleman.”
    Dower nodded sagely. “I knew just such a gent once— Gentleman ’Arry, they called ’im. Charmed all the fine folk with ’is pretty manners an’ sweet talk—till they woke up with their nostrils slit an’ their purses gone.”
    Looking doubtful, Cookie grabbed a handful of the stranger’s sun-streaked hair and twisted his head to the side. “He has an honest enough face, I s’pose. For a gent.”
    The man groaned, no doubt protesting the indignities he was being forced to endure. Laura gently wrested his hair from Cookie’s grip and smoothed it back down around his collar. “If we don’t get him inside and tend to that lump on his head, I doubt he’ll live long enough to slit anyone’s nostrils.”
    She wanted to groan herself when Lottie and George came running out of the barn, trailed by a wobbling line of kittens. She had hoped to prepare them for the new arrival before they could fire a barrage of questions at her.
    “Who’s that?”
    “What’s his name?”
    “Did he fall off a horse?”
    “Did he tumble out of a tree?”
    “Was he set upon by robbers?”
    “Has he fainted?”
    “Is he dead?” Lottie asked, gingerly poking at one buckskin-clad hip.
    “You’re not going to be able to tell from that angle,”
    George pointed out, fingering the fine kerseymere of the man’s riding coat.
    “He’s a gent,” Cookie announced with no small amount of proprietary pride.
    Dower shook his head. “ ’E’s a fugitive from the law, ’e is. Goin’ to murder us all in our beds soon as we close our eyes tonight.”
    Lottie’s round blue eyes brightened. “A murderer, you say? How delicious!”
    Laura gritted her teeth, wondering what the good Lord hoped to teach her by cursing her with a family of Bedlamites. “He’s not a fugitive or a murderer. He’s simply an unfortunate traveler in need of some Christian charity.” She snatched the hem of the man’s jacket out of George’s hand, her voice rising. “And I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to give it to him. And we’re going to do it, by God, before he expires from neglect!”
    They all stared at her, their mouths hanging open. Even Dower, who spoke profanity more fluently than he spoke the King’s English, looked taken aback.
    Recovering her aplomb, Laura gave her hair a prim pat. “Now I’d appreciate it very much, Dower, if you would remove our guest to the house without further delay.”
    Still grumbling beneath his breath