Read Miss Truelove Beckons (Classic Regency Romances Book 12) for Free Online Page B

words on the breeze with expert cadence. “We have been looking everywhere for you. Tea has been served, but you never came back, and you have been gone this age!”
    Drake turned to find Miss Swinley on Conroy’s arm, bearing down on them at a determined pace. “My apologies, Miss Swinley. You must lay such barbarous behavior at my door, for Miss Becket has been my captive audience. I have been boring her with war stories.”
    He could see from the corner of his eye Miss Becket’s swift questioning glance, but he felt compelled to tell a half-truth. It would not do to say they were speaking of love and marriage; it made more of their conversation than there really was.
    “Not the thing to do, old man,” Conroy said, his voice smooth but his brown eyes full of questions. “The ladies prefer lighter subjects. Is that not so, Miss Swinley?”
    Arabella cast him a side glance and then swept her lashes down. “It is true. We are but frail creatures, and any talk of bloodshed is so . . . oh, terrifying! I can imagine a distinguished war hero like Lord Drake might not understand our feeble fears, being so courageous, but . . .” She trailed off and sighed, as though the subject were too painful to continue.
    Drake felt a swift rise of the strange blend of ennui and anger bubble through him at her predictable and patently false deprecation of her own sex’s fortitude. “I have always been under the impression that the fair sex was perhaps the more brave,” he said, through gritted teeth. “After all, childbearing is surely the most frightening—”
    Arabella gave a little scream, and swooned against Conroy in a convincing display of delicacy. Conroy cast him a reproachful look, and Miss Becket tore away from him to administer to her cousin.
    “How could you, Drake?” Conroy said, his voice accusing, his dark eyes angry. “Have you no manners left? It is above time that you learned that you cannot trade on your war hero reputation to forgive your every rudeness. You are not in battle now, old man!”
    Remorse coursed through him. Conroy was right; he was not fit for polite company. He bowed. “Please excuse me, ladies. Conroy, I will leave them in your capable hands. My apologies for my beastly behavior.” He turned to Miss Becket. “Your servant, miss.”
    True, supporting still-swooning Arabella and thinking her cousin was doing it up much too brown, watched him limp away. What had caused that turn to bluntness when he had been the very soul of gentility with her? It just proved that though they had spoken for a half hour, and she had come to feel she understood some part of him, the inner man was still a mystery to her. And would remain that, for he was destined, if Lady Swinley and Lady Leathorne had their way, to wed Arabella.
    How would the two go on as husband and wife? she wondered as she helped Lord Conroy support Arabella back into the blue saloon. Arabella was lovely and had taken well in London, but her own and her mother’s aspirations had kept her from accepting any of the numerous offers she had, or so True had always believed. Nothing less than an eldest son would do, and a future earl was the best possibility. Both of them had held on to the notion that Bella would not marry anyone but Lord Drake . . . unless a duke or a marquess should ask, of course, and despite her success in London she had never been wooed by a gentleman with such a title. At twenty-two it was time she found a husband, her mother had said. One more Season and she might be whispered of as on the shelf. Lady Swinley was right about one thing: Arabella would make an admirable countess, if that elevated position required a measure of haughtiness, an outer calm, and a streak of stubbornness a mile wide.
    But would she ever learn to love Lord Drake as he deserved? True worried that Arabella, determined to wed a coronet, would not stop to consider either her own or her future husband’s happiness. Of course Lord Drake was a man, not