by Mary Balogh
Freyja preferred not to be anywhere near the vicinity of Alvesley when it happened—and Lindsey Hall was near.
Hence this journey to Bath and the prospect of having to amuse herself there for a month or more.
Sometime soon, she thought just before she drifted off to sleep, she really was going to have to start looking seriously at all the gentlemen—and there were many of them despite the fact that she was now five-and-twenty and always had been ugly—who would jump through hoops if she were merely to hint that marriage to her might be the prize. Being single at such an advanced age really was no fun for a lady. The trouble was that she was not wholly convinced that being married would be any better. And it would be too late to discover that it really was not after she had married. Marriage was a life sentence, her brothers were fond of saying—though two of the four had taken on that very sentence within the past few months.
Freyja awoke with a start some indeterminate time later when the door of her room opened suddenly and then shut again with an audible click. She was not even sure she had not dreamed it until she looked and saw a man standing just inside the door, clad in a white, open-necked shirt and dark pantaloons and stockings, a coat over one arm, a pair of boots in the other hand.
Freyja shot out of bed as if ejected from a fired cannon and pointed imperiously at the door.
“Out!” she said.
The man flashed her a grin, which was all too visible in the near-light room.
“I cannot, sweetheart,” he said. “That way lies certain doom. I must go out the window or hide somewhere in here.”
“Out!” She did not lower her arm—or her chin. “I do not harbor felons. Or any other type of male creature. Get out!”
Somewhere beyond the room were the sounds of a small commotion in the form of excited voices all speaking at once and footsteps—all of them approaching nearer.
“No felon, sweetheart,” the man said. “Merely an innocent mortal in a ton of trouble if he does not disappear fast. Is the wardrobe empty?”
Freyja's nostrils flared.
“Out!” she commanded once more.
But the man had dashed across the room to the wardrobe, yanked the door open, found it empty, and climbed inside.
“Cover for me, sweetheart,” he said just before shutting the door from the inside, “and save me from a fate worse than death.”
SLIGHTLY MARRIED
A Dell Book / April 2003
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2003 by Mary Balogh
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Published simultaneously in Canada
eISBN: 978-0-440-33449-1
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