Bridgerton Collection, Volume 1 (Bridgertons #1-3)

by Julia Quinn

Colin made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snort. Or maybe a laugh. Or maybe both. And Anthony suddenly knew. One look at his brother’s face should have given it all away. This was no shy, retiring, underappreciated spinster. And whatever she had said to Colin earlier that evening, it had contained no compliments about Anthony. Fratricide was legal in England, wasn’t it? If not, it damn well should have been.

Colin snorted again, only this time it sounded as if he were being strangled.

Colin turned deliberately from his brother to Kate. “I think I might need another glass of lemonade,” he gasped. “Or maybe,” said Anthony, “something stronger. Hemlock, perhaps?” Miss Sheffield clapped a hand over her mouth, presumably to stifle a burst of horrified laughter. “Lemonade will do just fine,” Colin returned smoothly.

Anthony could see Miss Sheffield growing worried at the devilish gleam in Colin’s eye. He took a rather uncharitable pleasure in this. His reaction was, he knew, a touch out of proportion. But something about this Miss Katharine Sheffield sparked his temper and made him positively itch to do battle with her. And win. That much went without saying.

“I believe,” he said smoothly, “that you were about to say something you would soon regret.” “No,” she said, sounding deliberately thoughtful, “I don’t think regrets were in my future.” “They will be,” he said ominously.

“Now then,” he said, once their feet began to move in the familiar steps, “suppose you tell me why you hate me.” Kate trod on his foot. Lord, he was direct. “I beg your pardon?”

Honesty, Kate quickly decided, would be her best strategy. If he could be direct, well then, so could she. “Probably,” she answered with a wicked smile, “because you know that had it occurred to me to step on your foot on purpose, I would have done so.” He threw back his head and laughed.

He grinned. “Not suitors, but idiots?” She caught his gaze with hers and was surprised to find true mirth in his eyes. “Surely you’re not going to hand me such a delicious piece of bait as that, my lord?” “And yet you did not take it,” he mused. Kate looked down to see if there was some way she might discreetly step on his foot again. “I have very thick boots, Miss Sheffield,” he said.

“Ah, that makes you a veritable expert on men, and husbands in particular. Especially since you have been married yourself, yes?” “You know I am unwed,” she ground out. Anthony stifled the urge to smile. Good Lord, but it was fun baiting the elder Miss Sheffield.

He leaned in closer, letting his hot breath brush against her cheek. She shivered. He’d known she’d shiver. He smiled wickedly. “There is very little we relish more than a challenge.”

whispered, “And you, Miss Sheffield, have issued to me a most delicious challenge.”

Kate and Anthony exited out the doorway and headed west on Milner Street. “I usually stay to the smaller streets and make my way up to Brompton Road,” Kate explained, thinking that he might not be very familiar with this area of town, “then take that to Hyde Park. But we can walk straight up Sloane Street, if you prefer.”

And while the woman on his arm was not the woman he planned to take to wife, nor, in fact, was she a woman he planned to take to anything, Anthony felt a rather easy sense of contentment wash over him.

Instead, he simply got an intoxicating whiff of her scent, which was an odd combination of exotic lilies and sensible soap.

“I do wish I could remove my bonnet,” she said wistfully. Anthony nodded his agreement, feeling much the same way about his hat. “You could probably push it back just a bit without anyone noticing,” he suggested. “Do you think?” Her entire face lit up at the prospect, and that strange stab of something pierced his gut again.

There were some bonds, he was coming to realize, that were stronger than those of blood. These were not bonds he had room for in his life.

“Of course!” Colin said. “I suspect you’ll fit right in with the rest of us schemers and cheaters.” “Coming from you,” Kate said with a laugh, “I know that was a compliment.”

But where Edwina was kind and generous, Cressida was, in Kate’s estimation, a self-centered, ill-mannered witch who took her joy in the torment of others.

Kate groaned as she pushed back her covers and rose to her feet. One of these days she was going to have to learn how to force her brain to stop racing in eight different directions at once.

I hear you, Kate!

The Pall Mall game had been an enjoyable interlude, but once back at the house, he’d been thrust into the role of host for his mother’s party. Which had been almost as exhausting as the tenant visits. Eloise was barely seventeen and clearly had needed someone to watch over her, that bitchy Cowper girl had been tormenting poor Penelope Featherington, and someone had had to do something about that, and . . . And then there was Kate Sheffield. The bane of his existence. And the object of his desires. All at once.

Anthony just stared at her, completely at a loss. There was, he realized dimly, something a bit deflating about her willingness to marry him off to her sister, since he’d spent the better part of the last two days fighting the urge to kiss her rather senseless.

That sinking feeling that he could, if he let himself, love her. Which was the one thing he feared most. Perhaps the only thing he feared at all.

Love was truly a spectacular, sacred thing. Anthony knew that. He’d seen it every day of his childhood, every time his parents had shared a glance or touched hands. But love was the enemy of the dying man. It was the only thing that could make the rest of his years intolerable—to taste bliss and know that it would all be snatched away. And that was probably why, when Anthony finally reacted to her words, he didn’t yank her to him and kiss her until she was gasping, and he didn’t press his lips to her ear and burn his breath against her skin, making sure she understood that he was on fire for her, and not her sister. Never her sister.

That was when she looked up and spied Anthony’s face. He’d gone white. Not pale, not even bloodless, but white. “Oh, my God,” he whispered, and the oddest thing was that his lips didn’t even move. “Oh, my God.”

“Which leaves our respective mothers, who would seem to have a vested interest in protecting our reputations. Which then leaves you, Mrs. Featherington, as the only member of our cozy little group who might prove herself a gossipy, loudmouthed fishwife over this.”

But as he stood there, watching Kate howl in protest (not, he thought, the most flattering of reactions, but he supposed she was allowed her pride as well), a strange sense of satisfaction washed over him. He wanted her. He wanted her desperately.

There were worse fates than finding oneself married to an intelligent, entertaining woman whom one happened to lust after around the clock.

His steps were long and purposeful, and she stumbled to keep up with him until she found her stride. “My lord,” she asked, hurrying along, “do you think this is wise?” “You sound like Mrs. Featherington,” he pointed out, not breaking his pace, even for a second. “Heaven forbid,” Kate muttered, “but the question still stands.”

“But—” He smiled. Slowly. “Did you know you argue too much?” “You brought me here to tell me that?” “No,” he drawled, “I brought you here to do this.” And then, before she had a chance to utter a word, before she even had a chance to draw breath, his mouth swooped down and captured hers in a hungry, searing kiss. His lips were voracious, taking everything she had to give and then demanding even more. The fire that glowed within her burned and crackled even hotter than what he’d stoked that night in his study, hotter by a tenfold.

Newton was happily munching away on Kate’s cap. “Good dog!” he said on a laugh. “I would make you buy me another,” Kate muttered, yanking her dress back up, “except that you’ve already spent a fortune on me this week.” This amused him. “I have?” he inquired mildly. She nodded. “I’ve been shopping with your mother.” “Ah. Good. I’m sure she didn’t let you pick out anything like that.” He motioned toward the now mangled cap in Newton’s mouth.

Edwina’s blank expression remained fixed on her face for another second, and then it melted into a rather radiant delight. “I have always wondered what it would be like to have a brother,” she said. “I hope I pass muster,” Anthony grunted, not entirely comfortable with the sudden outpouring of emotion.

But Kate’s mind was obviously not lodged as firmly in the gutter as his, since she chose to sit in the chair opposite him, even though there was plenty of room in his chair, provided they didn’t mind squeezing next to each other. Even the chair kitty-corner to his would have been better; at least then he could have yanked her up and hauled her onto his lap. If he tried that maneuver where she was seated across the table, he’d have to drag her through the middle of the tea service. Anthony narrowed his eyes as he assessed the situation, trying to guess exactly how much tea would spill on the rug, and then how much it would cost to replace the rug, and then whether he really cared about such a piddling amount of money, anyway . . .

“I actually did it for Edwina,” he mumbled, never comfortable with weepy females. But inside, she was making him feel about eight feet tall.

“It’s a good thing we finished that tea,” Kate said, eyeing the cups on the floor. “It would have made a dreadful mess.”

He didn’t want her to fall in love with him. It would make it that much harder for her when he died.

but he was still jealous. So goddamned jealous. Kate had won. Whereas he, who had acknowledged his demons but refused to fear them, was now petrified with terror. And all because the one thing he swore would never happen had come to pass. He had fallen in love with his wife.

There was something desperately erotic about the feel of her warm skin through the silk, and his hands roamed over her body relentlessly, touching, squeezing, doing anything he could to bind her to him. If he could have drawn her within him, he would have done it and kept her there forever.

He was eager to find his wife, to hold her in his arms and watch her face as he told her he loved her. He prayed that she would offer words returning the sentiment. He thought she would; he’d seen her heart in her eyes on more than one occasion. Perhaps she was just waiting for him to say something first. He couldn’t blame her if that was the case; he’d made a rather big fuss about how theirs would not be a love match right before their wedding. What an idiot he’d been.

He was lucky, Kate later reflected, that she hadn’t thought to grab one of the Pall Mall balls when she’d been rummaging for the set. Although on second thought, his head was probably far too hard for her to have made a dent.

The day he’d fallen in love. Not that he’d realized it at the time. Nor had Kate, he imagined, but he was certain that that was the day they had been fated to be together—the day of the infamous Pall Mall match. She left him with the pink mallet. She had sent his ball into the lake. God, what a woman.

Sophie stretched her lips into what the nearly blind might call a smile

Sophie pulled out a pin and stuck it back in precisely the same spot. “There. How does that feel?” Araminta twisted this way and that, then finally declared, “It’ll do.”

It does make one wonder what the late viscount and (still very-much alive) dowager viscountess would have named their next child had their offspring numbered nine. Imogen? Inigo? Perhaps it is best they stopped at eight.

Benedict was a Bridgerton, and while there was no family to which he’d rather belong, he sometimes wished he were considered a little less a Bridgerton and a little more himself.

Benedict suddenly had to get away. It was either that or kill the twittering ninnyhammer,

Benedict fought a groan. Prudence Featherington, while essentially a nice person, had a brain the size of a pea and a laugh so grating he’d seen grown men flee with their hands over their ears.

“She’s over there by the lemonade table,” Violet said, “dressed as a leprechaun, poor thing. The color is good for her, but someone really must take her mother in hand next time they venture out to the dressmaker. A more unfortunate costume, I can’t imagine.”

“You obviously haven’t seen the mermaid,” Benedict murmured.

“I’m off to find your sister.” “Which one?” “One of the ones who isn’t married,” Violet said pertly.

He adored his mother to distraction, but she did tend to err on the side of meddlesome when it came to the social lives of her children. And if there was one thing that bothered her even more than Benedict’s unmarried state, it was the sight of a young girl’s glum face when no one asked her to dance. As a result, Benedict spent a lot of time on the ballroom floor, sometimes with girls she wanted him to marry, but more often with the overlooked wallflowers. Of the two, he rather thought he preferred the wallflowers. The popular girls tended to be shallow and, to be frank, just a little bit dull.