Read His Saving Grace (Regency Refuge 1) for Free Online Page B

could feel the haze of anger lifting, clearing his vision so he could again see Grace for who he'd always believed her to be prior to the weekend of the house party. "I've been a heel."
    "You can say that again."
    "Will you forgive me?"
    "Did that ages ago," she said pertly.
    "I was angry about what happened."
    "You? Angry? Could have fooled me."
    The teasing tone of her banter swirled through the room like a rare perfume. Tempting. Tantalizing. Alluring.
    He'd been a clod these last weeks, and Grace was treating him much better than he deserved. Sitting down in a chair he said, "When my father died, I thought everything would be pretty straightforward. Go to London, take his place in the government, manage the estates. I was, unfortunately, wholly unprepared for the ton and its schemes."
    "You were different after you came back from London that first time, but you never said what happened. I thought it was grief for your father, and I didn't want to make you sad by asking."
    "Everywhere I went, there were women throwing themselves into my path. I was a duke."
    "Of course you were a duke," she said, puzzled. "How does that have anything to do with women?"
    Thinking back to his first weeks in London, Thomas said, "All parents want their daughters to marry well. Some parents are desperate. Because they are financially ruined, their daughter is unmarriageable, or maybe they are social climbers of the worst sort. It was like being at the butcher with everyone bidding on a prime side of beef. I was the side, and everybody wanted the best cut. I subsequently stopped going to social functions altogether. Being able to walk down a hallway without a woman trying to accost me and lure me into a room became nothing but a distant memory."
    "So," Grace asked, "problem solved?"
    Thomas shook his head. "The business of government takes place all over London. It's not exclusive to the House of Lords. A lot of policy took place at those social functions."
    "Please tell me you at least learned your lesson" she said, her green eyes glittering with humor, "and stopped walking down abandoned hallways?"
    With a derisive smile, Thomas said, "I eventually got the hang of it, but the better I got at avoiding difficult situations, the more aggressive women became about trying to entrap me. It would have been easier if I'd already been wed, but I was too young, and there was so much work that went into learning everything I needed to know. I couldn't let my father down. He'd groomed me to take over from the time I was little."
    "He was gone far too soon," Grace said. "You had a huge burden dumped on your shoulders for which you'd been no more than partially prepared. I prayed for you often during that time."
    "I'm fairly certain prayer and God's intervention are the only things that got me through." Shrugging dismissively, he said, "It was certainly nothing I did."
    "I'm sorry for not reaching out to you more after your father died. I should have been a better friend, but I was young. I thought that because I didn't know what to say, nothing I said could possibly be of any value."
    Thomas looked at Grace somberly and said, "Let's do each other a favor and leave the past in the past. What do you say?"
    "It sounds like a splendid idea," she replied with an emphatic nod.
    Thomas smiled and, changing the subject, asked, "Did I ever tell you about the time I got kidnapped?"
    Grace sat up straight at his words. "No. What on earth happened?"
    "A young lady well past the age of marriage and not quite attractive enough to draw male attention was in need of a husband. Her mother had become quite desperate. The mother paid a footman to kidnap me and take me to their townhome, where I was to be bound and gagged until the mother could arrange for the girl to be in the room with me so we would be forced to wed."
    "People actually do things like that?"
    "The footman, it turns out, had a conscience. He pulled the carriage over on the way to the family's home, unbound