Read How to Marry a Rogue for Free Online Page A

destroyed your mother’s garden.”
    She tucked the rose into his buttonhole. She didn’t remember her sobs so much as she remembered who had comforted her. Not Jonathan, who’d agreed with the nurse in her punishment. Jack had tossed her onto his shoulders and galloped around the corridors until her sobs turned to laughter. She stood back to admire her handiwork and plucked a drooping petal.
    “I hope you’ll come and visit us.” She tried to keep a jolly air, but her voice caught. The excitement she’d felt at the outset of the journey paled at the reality of their separation.
    “I will, but only if you assure me you will not be too busy with all the excitement around here.” A sweep of his arm took in the empty road and the quiet countryside. A bird chirped in the branches overhead.
    “I promise to tear myself away from it somehow.” She held out her hand uncertainly. How did one take leave of a gentleman who was neither relative nor admirer?
    Jack solved her dilemma. “Are you not going to kiss me goodbye? I understand it is the custom in France.”
    “So is eating frogs and snails. If you like, I’ll go into the garden and hunt them for your tea.” As if the slimy creatures dwelled within her middle, her stomach quivered and jumped. Her chest rose and fell too rapidly as he closed the last bit of space separating them.
    “Save them for me. I must dash.”
    Before she could speak or think, he placed his hands on her shoulders and dipped his head. He brushed a light kiss across each of her cheeks, and she wondered if he’d felt the heat of her blush on his lips.
    “Goodbye, Georgie. Look for me at week’s end, and we shall have a grand time.” He bowed quickly and climbed into the carriage. The driver urged the horses forward. She returned Jack’s wave until the carriage vanished behind the hedgerows.
    She must have walked inside to where Aunt Adele and Lady Priscilla were, and she must have drunk a little tea and eaten a bite or two of an apricot tart, but she could not remember a thing except Jack Waverley had kissed her.

Chapter Five
    Nothing at the vignoble had changed since Jack’s visit a year ago. He strode through the rows and rows of fragrant barrels while his grandfather’s foreman, Gaston Gironde, droned in heavily accented English about the shipping schedules and a particularly bad harvest the year before.
    Jack walked beside him, hands clasped behind his back, nodding now and then as he listened with half an ear. Georgiana’s softly floral scent still clung to his collar when he’d leaned in close for a mocking kiss goodbye. The remembered pressure of her downy cheek against his lips distracted him to the point where he nodded affirmatively to a question Gaston asked. Apparently, he gave the wrong response.
    Gaston’s thick eyebrows rose on his forehead. “But surely, Monsieur Waverley, you cannot mean to throw eighty barrels away! We usually turn it into a cheaper wine we sell locally. That is how we have always done things here.”
    Shaking his head to dispel the image of Georgiana’s wide blue eyes staring up into his, Jack observed the motion did little to force her out of his thoughts. “Do as you wish, man. I do not intend to make any changes. We both know my presence is so my grandfather can pay me in the guise of noble employment.”
    Gaston nodded briskly. “Wine it shall be.” He motioned toward the offices in the back of the building. “I will show you the books, Monsieur Waverley, and have your signature.”
    “Lead on,” Jack murmured, stifling a yawn. He’d always wondered how his grandfather could be involved in the mundane business world but now realized it was easy when he could send his grandson in his stead.
    At the office, Jack sat in the heavy carved chair at his grandfather’s desk. Long ago, his grandfather had taken frequent jaunts to oversee the vignoble , run in partnership with his friend, Gaston. When an old war wound prohibited him from taking