Read Perfect Bride for Free Online

it frightened him sometimes.
    Ah, yes, it was more than duty. He loved Justin and Julianna without question—he was glad their closeness had carried into adulthood. But there was a hunger in him, a yearning for something more. He wanted...a family of his own. A child of his own. Hell, a dozen children for that matter, for he would give them all the things he and Justin and Julianna had never had. Indeed, he could imagine no greater pleasure than the feel of a small, warm body snug gled against his chest, in complete and utter trust... a child of his blood.
    A son. A daughter...Sweet Christ, he didn’t care which, for the thought of either made his heart swell with emotion. God, but it would be good to hear gay, merry laughter echoing through the rooms—both here at his town house and at Thurston Hall.
    But there must be a wife before there could be chil dren, either son or daughter.
    His fingertip swirled around the rim of his glass again and again. His mood was suddenly pensive. Thanks to his mother, the family name had been mired in scandal throughout much of his childhood.
    But at least these last few years had been quiet. The storms had all been weathered, the damage repaired. His father’s death had been sudden, and Sebastian had been rather startled to learn he’d been careless with finances the last few years of his life.
    But the Sterlings were once again one of the rich est families in England. Indeed, he thought with a touch of the cynical air usually displayed by his brother, with power, wealth, and rank came privi lege. The dowager duchess too had borne her share of scandal throughout the years. It was said her son had seen to that, and she was now the most influen tial woman in town!
    But Sebastian would not allow scandal to touch his wife and children the way it had touched his brother and sister.
    And so, as with all things, Sebastian Sterling knew he must choose carefully. He was a man who preferred order in his life, a man who disliked the unexpected.
    At least Justin was right—he needn’t cast about for a bride. Of course he didn’t possess his brother’s classically elegant countenance. As one starry-eyed miss once declared upon her first glimpse of Justin, ’twas as if she’d died and gone to heaven! But Sebas tian was too dark, too big, too brawny—too much like a Gypsy, as he’d been teased when he was a boy.
    No, Sebastian decided, he wasn’t so devilishly handsome as his brother. But he would be a loving father. A good husband. He’d learned from his fa-ther’s coldness, his harsh, rigid nature ...his mother’s abandonment.
    But what of the woman who would be his wife?
    It must be done right or not at all.
    No simpering miss, to be sure. His wife must be a woman of grace and tact, of gentility and stability; cultured, well-bred, and well-educated. A woman of unswerving loyalty and devotion. A woman of scru ples, as strong and staunch as his own. And his wife would be a woman of stable nature, a loving, atten tive mother.
    Something shifted inside him, something that caught at the very center of his heart. Dear God, he prayed fervently, above all, a loving mother!
    And beauty? Nay, he decided. Many a man would demand that of a bride. Not he. Oh, he was not op posed to a pleasing countenance. If she was a woman fair to look upon, comely of feature and shapely of form, all the better. But it was her inner beauty that mattered most.
    He smiled suddenly. Justin would call him a fool, that outward beauty was not so high on his list. Se bastian was well aware of his brother’s tastes; Justin would not deign even to glance at a woman who was not a diamond of the first water.
    His smile ebbed. His heart squeezed.
    Dear God, she could be a toad. As long as she loved him and would never leave. He was deter mined he wouldn’t make the same mistakes as his father and mother. Dear God, not with his children.
    Or his wife.
    The brandy decanter was nearly drained to the dregs before he arose and