Read The Temporary Wife/A Promise of Spring for Free Online Page B

was a strange unreality to the moment. And a stark reality too.
    S HE WAS A married lady. She had walked to that quiet, rather gloomy church this morning, gone inside as herself, as Charity Duncan, and come out again a mere half hour later as someone different, as someone with another name. Everything had changed. Nothing would ever be the same again. She was Charity Earheart, the …
    She turned her head to look at the taciturn man beside her on the carriage seat. He had not spoken a word since his footman had carried out her small trunk from Philip’s lodgings—the carriage had appeared to fill the whole street and had attracted considerable attention—and he had asked her in seeming surprise if there was nothing else.
    “No, sir,” she had said and had thought that probably she should have called him
my lord
.
    She was … She felt very foolish. And he must have felt her eyes upon him. He turned his head to look ather. His eyes were very dark, she thought. They were almost black. And quite opaque. She had the peculiar feeling that a heavy curtain or perhaps even a steel door had been dropped just behind his eyes so that no one would ever be able to peep into his soul.
    “I am—
who
?” she asked him. She could not for the life of her remember. “You are the Marquess of
What
?”
    “Staunton,” he said. He had an aquiline nose, rather thin lips. One lock of very dark hair had fallen across his brow above his right eye and curled there like an upside-down question mark. “Eldest son of the Duke of Withingsby. His heir, my lady. We travel to Enfield Park, his seat in Wiltshire, so that you may be properly presented to him.”
    He really was a marquess. Lord Rowling had not been teasing her. He was not after all plain Mr. Earheart. But of course his servants had called him
my lord
and had called her
my lady
. And he was the son
and heir
of a duke. The Duke of Withingsby. He would be a duke himself one day. She would be … No, she would not. Not really.
    “Why would you marry without your father’s knowledge?” she asked. “And why me? I am a gentleman’s daughter, but one would expect a future duke to look for somewhat higher qualifications than that in a wife.”
    His smile was rather unpleasant, she thought, despite the fact that it revealed very white teeth. But the smile in no way touched his eyes. “Perhaps, my lady,” he said, “that is just the point.”
    He had married her to spite someone? His father?
    “Do you and your father have a quarrel with each other?” she asked.
    He continued to smile—with his lips. “Shall we say,” he said, “that the more displeased his grace proves to be, the more gratified I shall be?”
    She understood immediately. She would have had tobe stupid not to. “So I am a mere pawn in a game,” she said.
    His smile disappeared and his eyes narrowed. “A very well-paid pawn, my lady,” he said. “And one who will be titled for the rest of her life.”
    It was as well, she thought, that they were to remain together for only a few weeks—just until she had given the Duke of Withingsby a thorough disgust of herself, she supposed. She did not believe she could possibly like this man. What sort of man married a stranger merely to displease his father?
    Not that she had any cause for moral outrage, of course. She had accepted the offer he had made
yesterday
—gracious, was it really only yesterday?—without demanding to know anything about the man beyond the fact that he had the means to keep the promises he made her. She had married him for those promises. She was the sort of woman who would marry a stranger for money. It was an uncomfortable admission to make, even—or perhaps especially—to oneself.
    It would be very difficult for this man to become anything but a stranger, she thought, even though she was apparently to spend a few weeks in his company. Those eyes! They had no depth whatsoever. They proclaimed him to be a man who chose not to be known, a