Читать книгу How to Wed a Baron - Кейси Майклс, Kasey Michaels - Страница 8

A QUARTER MILE FROM THE manor house located five miles outside the ancient city of Prague, and hidden amid mighty oak trees that swallowed up much of the September sunshine, a lone figure sat on the grassy bank of a meandering stream. Her knees were tucked up beneath her chin as she intently watched the progress of an early fallen leaf until it became caught up in a tangle of water lilies and disappeared below the surface.

The young woman’s sigh was audible as she turned her head and seemed to pick out another leaf floating downstream, ready to follow its progress toward capture and oblivion, powerless to change its fate.

So, the man watching her thought. She’s been told.

Luka Prochazka remained concealed behind a tree trunk as he cursed the Fates that had denied him any skill with the paintbrush, for surely this was a moment worthy of being captured on canvas for the ages. Her slim woman’s body clad in a worn gown, her marvelous tumble of thick dark curls that seemed almost too heavy to be supported by the fragile column of her throat, the downcast eyes, the complexion of purest ivory…

She sighed once more, her shoulders rising and falling in dramatic fashion. Dearest Lady Alina. At not quite her nineteenth birthday, she was so very accomplished at drama.

Yes, this would be how he would have titled his portrait: Lady Magdaléna Evinka Nadeja Valentin, In Despair. Lesser hearts than his would break to see her this way. Her aunt, Lady Mimi Valentin, would give ten years of her life, perhaps twenty, to be half so beautiful, which was probably why she’d been so eager to do as the king had requested. Indeed, knowing the woman, she had most certainly delighted in the prospect of attending court with Lady Alina no longer in her train, capturing the eye of any man between the ages of twelve and three-days-dead.

Poor, beautiful Lady Alina. How very hard she had tried to be who and what she was not. Wild, free, unfettered. But an English mother and a half-Romany father, both long dead, did not a Romany make. In the end, it was the English blood that counted to those in power. Those in control. And to those in control, a young woman of marriageable age was nothing more than a pawn.

She would make a beautiful bride once Luka delivered her to her fate. Her groom, this unknown Englishman she was being sent to in six weeks’ time, would be a lucky man, indeed.

He turned away to silently retrace his steps, give Alina some privacy until the worst of her sulk was over. As he did, he thought to himself, In the end, she’ll make the best of it. She’ll find a way, her own way. She is her father’s daughter, and there is no defeat in her….