Read To Wed His Christmas Lady (The Heart of a Duke Book 7) for Free Online Page A

looks on her. Cara’s skin went hot. “Dry clothing,” she finished lamely. “I require dry clothing.”
    The old woman beamed. “Well, that is easy enough, my lady. I’ve several lovely gowns. Nowhere near the fancy garments you are accustomed to.” She turned to go.
    “No,” Cara cried out and her utterance echoed around the inn, earning shocked silence. She turned back to the earl’s driver and forced her tone into a semblance of icy calm “Go.”
    The earl’s servant shifted on his feet with the gusting storm raging its fury at the door. “But, my lady,” he whispered. “It is snowing .”
    She took a step toward him. “It is a bit of snow and I command you to go.” Please go .
    He dropped his unrepentant stare to her wet boots.
    “You’d send a person out into this Godforsaken weather for your own fripperies, brat?”
    A harsh, angry voice sounded beyond her shoulder and she spun about. Her heart stilled and fear settled like a stone in her belly at the big, broad, bear of a man glowering down at her. She fisted the fabric of her gown and swallowed hard. A man who glowered at her. With the gruff stubble on his face and towering height, the imposing stranger wore the rank of his lesser class like a stamp upon his skin. As though he’d followed the direction her thoughts had traveled, he narrowed his blue, nearly black eyes in a menacing fashion. She swallowed hard and backed away from him.
    A mocking grin pulled at his hard lips. “Nothing to say, brat?”
    Outrage blotted out the nervousness swirling in her belly. Brat? Why, the lout had called her brat. Twice. And challenged her, before this small, shocked cluster of strangers. Finding her courage, she settled her feet on the wood floor. “How dare you?” She prided herself on those evenly delivered words when inside she quaked. By God, the man was a foot taller than her own five-foot four-inch frame and his powerful muscles strained the confines of his coarse garments.
    He folded his arms at his chest, stretching the fabric of his white sleeves over his defined biceps. She really had no place ogling a figure such as him and yet—she warmed. She’d spent most of her life filing men into the category of worthless, shiftless bounders such as her father. Never before had she admired a man, and warmed at his mere presence, alone.
    “How dare I? You are a spoiled ice princess who’d send out her servants to rescue what? Your fine gowns?” His condescending opinion jerked her back from her foolhardy musings with all the effect of being dumped into that icy snow outside.
    Cara ground her teeth. “Do not call me ice princess. Furthermore,” she raked a gaze over him. “It is not your business.” What should she expect a rude-mannered lout such as this one to understand about that necklace buried in the bottom of her trunk?
    He took another step closer and her courage deserted her. “Not my business?”
    Oh, dear. She’d never before been expected to account for her opinions to anyone beyond her father. And he cared even less for her opinions than he did for her on the whole. Cara retreated until her back collided with the wooden door. She winced, managing a jerky nod. “That is correct. N-not your business.”
    “Not my business that a spoiled lady would send a man out into a bloody blizzard for her fancy baubles?” A seething fury graveled his voice.
    His highhandedness grated on her last nerve. In a bid to goad him, she tipped her chin up a notch. “I see by your words, you at least understand.” What did he know anything of her?
    It proved the wrong thing to say. He ate away the distance between them in three long strides. His alacrity wrung a gasp from her and she held her hands up to ward him off, but he continued coming until a hairsbreadth separated them.
    Even weakened from fever, Alison managed a fierce look for the stranger. “How dare you? Do you know who—?”
    Cara glanced around the hulking beast’s shoulder, silencing the