Page 27 of Deceiving an Earl
“Maybe I wanted something different.”
“Maybe.” But she sounded skeptical.
Often Oliver had wondered if his mother had known about him and Ellen. He didn’t think so. She’d been pregnant with Josie and preoccupied with his sister’s imminent arrival. He’d barely seen her during his brief affair with Ellen.
“She is a widow now,” she said.
“Mother,” he warned. If there was one project that Nora worked on, it was correcting Oliver’s status as a bachelor. She would find him a wife if it was the last thing she did.
Unfortunately, she’d been woefully incapable of it, but that meant she only tried harder.
“What?” She tried to appear innocent, but it didn’t work on Oliver.
He stood and leaned down to kiss her cheek. “Don’t even think of it.”
“Where are you going? I was hoping you would stay for lunch.”
“I have an appointment. I will stop by next Tuesday for lunch, if you are available.”
She pressed her lips together and narrowed her blue eyes, so much like his own. “I will have to check my calendar.”
“Do that and let me know.”
“She’s a beautiful woman.”
“Stop.”
“A mother can try.”
He laughed as he let himself out.
Chapter Eight
They were sitting inside Gunters, huddled at a small table in the far back corner, eating ices.
Ellen had told her mother that she was shopping for a new pair of gloves, having ripped her favorite pair. It was all a lie, of course. She’d not ripped her favorite gloves. She was eating a lemon ice with Oliver. Except she couldn’t quite bring herself to tell her mother about Oliver.
Maybe because it was all so new, this feeling.
And her parents had plans for her. Ellen had known that since she was a little girl. Aspirations, her mother had called it. It fell on Ellen to elevate the family.
But Ellen had aspirations of her own. Plans that didn’t include what her parents thought she should be doing. She had things she wanted to do with her life that had nothing to do with men and their titles and Society and her place in it.
“A little bird told me something,” she said, licking her spoon.
“Animals speak to you?” Oliver’s eyes crinkled in laughter, and she dissolved into giggles.
Oliver scared her. Or rather her constant thoughts of Oliver scared her. Her heart beating out of control when Oliver was near scared her.
“This particular little bird spoke to me.” The bird was her friend Ruth, but she would play this game with him because she loved being silly with Oliver.
“And what did the bird say?”
“That your father is the Earl of Armbruster.”
He put his spoon down, suddenly serious. “Is that a problem?”
“No.” She stabbed her spoon into her melting ice. She’d been surprised when Ruth had told her, although she shouldn’t have been. Oliver held himself like someone who was important, someone of nobility. It was just another thing that frightened her, his titles.
