Read Far Too Tempted for Free Online Page A

answering to her efforts to open it. This was the country, she thought, utterly shocked. They rarely locked their doors at Braidwood, not even when everyone was asleep.
    Lifting the doorknocker, she let it fall. The sound echoed hollowly.
    She waited.
    Nothing.
    With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, Jessica pounded on the wood, lightly at first and then frantically with both fists, calling out.
    No lights, no movement, no answer. It seemed no one was home. A rising tide of panic clogged her throat.
    Now what am I going to do?
    The day had already been long and awful, and this final blow made her eyes sting with tears. As she sank down wearily on the front steps, she let the warm trickle turn into a flood, sobbing into her hands for a good five minutes before she sat up, wiped her damp face with the back of her hands, and swallowed hard as she stiffened her spine.
    This was the time to weigh her options or she would spend the night sitting there on the steps like some abandoned orphan.
    Which she essentially was. That thought brought a few more tears, which she blinked away.
    She could walk over to Grayston Hall. There was no question of it, the duke and duchess would welcome her with open arms and she dearly loved their children. The only problem was that Grayston was a few miles away and she was already exhausted, both emotionally and physically. Also, the possibility existed that they, as well as Robert, were not in residence and she would have to walk back. In her tired and emotional state, she wasn’t sure she could make it both ways. Not to mention it was getting quite dark. It was one thing to ride over on horseback, but if Braidwood was so obviously deserted, she doubted there would be any horses in the stables and she would have to walk.
    The other option was to break into the house and spend the night in her warm bed. Even if she was alone, at least she’d be home. Then in the morning she could go to Grayston and see if the Ramseys were there and could help get word to her irresponsible brother.
    As a plan of action, it made the greater amount of sense.
    Resolute, she got to her feet and went around to the back of the house, growing ever more horrified by the sight of the gardens, once her mother’s pride and joy, now solidly choked with weeds and sadly overgrown.
    The servants’ entrance too, was locked.
    So was every window she tried. Library, study, billiards room, formal parlor…
    Tilting her head, she looked upward to where the window of her own bedroom faintly reflected the growing starlight. The latch didn’t catch well, she knew this, and she’d often climbed down to sneak out for a moonlit ride using the ivy that clung in limpet vines to the brick of the house.
    Those days were past.
    Long past. Sweet days, before her parents had both succumbed to the mysterious fever that had swept upon them so suddenly, when Robert had been careless and charming and his lack of character hadn’t mattered because he wasn’t entrusted with a fortune and responsibility for another human being.
    He was the male, but it had occurred to her more than once that it would have been better if she had been left the fortune, and her brother was dependent. In British society it didn’t happen that way, but she was far more practical.
    The breeze brushed by, rustling the leaves in an unearthly sound. The stars had brightened, scattered like diamonds over an ebony sky. Jessica shivered and glanced around. Familiar shapes took on eerie proportions in the darkness. Suddenly she no longer wanted to be there standing alone.
    With steely resolve, she grasped the vines, hiked up her skirts and began to climb.
    Nearly as old as the house itself, the vines were thick, some as big around as her wrist, but in places they still pulled away from the wall under her weight, making her scramble for a better hold. Using every foothold possible, she managed the ascent and finally grasped the edge of her window, pulling at the