Cupid's Mistake (Cupid Regency Romance) by Karen Harbaugh Page B

remark his wife had once uttered, and how he had thought her clever for giving a set-down to an encroaching guest with such finesse. She had done this often, he realized.
    Miss Hathaway was not like this. There was something about her He grinned. She often seemed to have a bewildered, worried air, as if she were some small wild creature suddenly uncovered from under a sheaf of bracken.
    Somehow he could not imagine her giving a deliberate set- down to anyone.
    Which was why, despite all her awkwardness, her gaucherie, and her definite bluestocking interests, he'd asked her for a dance at the Marchmonts' ball. Blytheland pulled on his greatcoat—the Marchmonts' house was a good half hour from town, and the night was cool—then sighed as he took his hat from his valet. He had attempted to depress her pretensions, and when she had looked at him with her wide, hurt eyes, he had felt like a cad.
    Chloe had never been like that . She had made fine play with her eyes, had coaxed and cajoled, she had tossed her fiery hair or smiled and reasoned with one in such a way that her desires seemed altogether sensible. He would not be so trapped again.
    Yet, he was not imperceptive, either. It was clear to him that Miss Hathaway was not at all like Chloe in nature. Miss Hathaway did not cajole or coax , and he wondered if she knew how to flirt with her eyes. When she looked at him, it was as if she searched for something beneath his words, down to his very heart.
    Perhaps her interest in radical ideas was not deep , and perhaps she could be persuaded away from them. And who would do the persuading? The thought made him pause one moment before ascending the steps to his coach.
    " Thinking of setting up a nursery?" Eldon had said. Blytheland leaned back onto the squabs of the carriage and carefully let the thought settle into his mind. He was six- and-twenty years old, the only heir of his father, the Duke of Beaumont. Though his father had not pressured him into a second marriage, Blytheland was quite aware of his obligation to continue the line.
    It had been two years . . . two years since Chloe had lain with another man and died of the result. An anger still burned in him from time to time, and sometimes he felt an odd ache of emptiness. No one could fill Chloe's place, for she had played a role he thought he had loved and now knew he hated.
    But was he not older now, and wiser? And he was not so much of a fool as to think that all women were like Chloe. Was not his own mother a devoted wife? And his sisters were certainly faithful also, and no scandal had ever touched them.
    He smiled and felt the tension fall away from his shoulders. Eldon may have been teasing, but he was quite right. It was time to think of marrying a suitable young lady of good morals and good birth. Indeed, it did not matter if he loved the lady or not, it was an heir he needed and a respectable, honest young woman who would neither play him nor the title false. He would go about it in a reasonable manner this time and would select his new wife with careful reason, and pay strict attention to all that he required in a wife.
    Indeed, his preoccupation with Miss Hathaway—and he admitted his thoughts had been a little too filled with her image of late—was a clear indication of one thing: it was time he was married again. He needed to continue the Templeton line after all. Marriage would certainly help assuage whatever passions he 'd been experiencing lately, and he was growing tired of flitting from one brief liaison to another.
    The coach rumbled to a halt in front of the Marchmonts ' house, and the image of Miss Hathaway rose in his mind. Blytheland smiled to himself. Oh, she was eligible, for her breeding was good, however socially inept she was, but he could do better than Cassandra Hathaway, a baronet's daughter of moderate fortune. He was heir to a dukedom, and owed the title a lady worthy of it. One who was elegant and beautiful, preferably, and certainly one