The Heiress Bride - Catherine Coulter [1]
Hell, what was a wife anyway, he mused, particularly an English wife? He could, if he wished, simply lock her in one of the musty rooms and toss away the key. He could beat her if he found her proud and unbending. In short, he could do anything he pleased to a damned wife. Perhaps he would be lucky and she’d be as malleable as a sheep, as witless as a cow, as bland as the castle goats who were at their happiest chewing on old boots. Whatever she would be, he would deal with it. He had no choice.
Colin Kinross, seventh earl of Ashburnham, strode from the study room at the top of the north tower. The next morning he was on his way to London to find a bride with a dowry as great as Aladdin’s treasure.
CHAPTER
1
London, 1807
SINJUN SAW HIM the first time on a Wednesday night in the middle of May at a rout given by the Duke and Duchess of Portmaine. He was a good thirty feet from her across the massive ballroom, partially obscured by a lush palm tree, but it didn’t matter. She saw him quite clearly enough and she couldn’t look away. She craned her neck around two dowagers when he walked gracefully to a knot of ladies, bowed over a young one’s hand, and led her in a cotillion. He was tall; she could see that because the lady came only to his shoulder. Unless, of course, the young lady was a dwarf, and Sinjun doubted that. No, he was tall, much taller than was she, the saints be praised.
She continued to stare at him, not knowing why she was doing it and not caring in the least, until she felt a hand on her forearm. She didn’t want to look away from him, not now. She shook the hand away and walked off, her eyes still on him. She heard a woman’s voice from behind her but didn’t turn around. He was smiling down at his partner now, and she felt something deep and strong move within her. She walked closer, circling the dance floor, drawing nearer. He was no more than ten feet away now and she saw that he was magnificent, as tall as her brother Douglas, and as massively built, his hair blacker than Douglas’s, ink-black and thick, and his eyes—good Lord, a man shouldn’t have eyes like that. They were a rich dark blue, a blue deeper than the sapphire necklace Douglas had given Alex for her birthday. If only she were close enough to touch him, to set her fingers lightly upon the cleft in his chin, to sift through that shining hair of his. She knew in that moment that she would be perfectly content to look at him for the rest of her life. Surely that was a mad thought, but it was nonetheless true. He was well built; she wasn’t ignorant about things like that, not with two outrageous older brothers. Yes, he had an athlete’s body, strong and hard and tough, and he was young, probably younger than Ryder, who had just turned twenty-nine. A small, insistent voice told her that she was being a silly twit, to open her eyes, to stop this infatuated nonsense, for after all, he was just a man, a man like any other man, and in all good likelihood he was cursed with a troll’s character to go along with his magnificent looks. That, or worse: He was a complete bore, or had no brain worth speaking of, or he had rotted teeth. But no, that wasn’t true, for he just threw his head back and laughed deeply, showing beautiful, even, white teeth, and indeed, that laugh bespoke great intelligence to her discerning brain, a rich, deep laugh, just like his eyes, and weren’t they intelligent? Ah, but he could be a drunkard or a gamester, or a rake or any number of other exceptionable things.
She didn’t care. She just kept staring. A great hunger welled up in her, a hunger that spread into a great coalition of hungers she didn’t understand, but she knew that he had put