Page 35 of Deceiving an Earl
“Tell me about you,” Ellen said.
“You know about me.”
She squeezed his arm. “I know you are a viscount, your father is an earl, and that you just left Eton. And you like orange ices.”
He thought about her question, really thought about it. Was he passionate about anything as much as Ellen was passionate about learning about other people?
And then he thought of something. “It’s silly,” he said. “And rather boring.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
He took a deep breath and for the first time voiced his inner thoughts. Thoughts that were not fully formed, that had been nothing but ethereal flits of his imagination.
“My father is teaching me about being an earl.”
“That does not come naturally to you?” She laughed and he grinned.
“There is so much I wasn’t aware of. Land and finances and there are people relying on you. It’s all rather daunting.”
“And you don’t want that responsibility?”
“On the contrary. But what I want… I feel that my father’s way is the old way of doing things. I think that this belief that earls run estates and make sure their tenants are doing what they are supposed to do is outdated. I see change in the future, and it is not good change for the old nobility.”
“This sounds ominous,” she said, but she was taking him seriously. She was listening, and that made him want to talk more.
“It doesn’t have to be. Have you heard of the steam engine?”
“I have. Large machines that can take us to the country in a fraction of the time it takes now.”
“Exactly. I think the steam engine is going to change everything. I think it will bring the country folk to the city. I think for the first time ever, families that have known nothing but toiling on land that is not theirs will realize they can come to the city and earn a better wage, become their own people instead of servants to someone else’s land.”
“I’d never thought of it that way before.”
“I think many noble families are going to be negatively affected if they refuse to see the change coming.”
“And what do you propose to do so you are not negatively affected?”
He drew a deep breath. “Trade.”
Her brows rose. “Trade as in you would become a shopkeeper?”
“As in I would bring the goods to the shops. I would purchase ships and have the raw materials, or even the finished products, shipped to England, and I would sell them to the shops.”
“That’s not something that earls do,” she said.
“I know, but I think it’s something they will need to embrace if they want to survive. It’s happening already. Men of business are surpassing many nobles in wealth. They do not have the titles, but they have grander homes, more money to spend.”
“And that is important to you? Grand houses? More money?”
He shook his head, fearing she thought him shallow. “The excitement of new ventures is important to me. Discovering new ways to do things is what’s important.”
“Well I think it’s marvelous and ingenious and I have no doubt you will be a raging success.”
Oliver acted on an impulse that he had never felt before. He pulled Ellen beneath a tree with low-hanging branches, cupped her cheeks, and kissed her.
She squealed when he pulled her under the tree, gasped when he kissed her, and instantly melted against him as her lips softened beneath his.
He’d kissed women before. There’d been a certain maid at Eton willing to do anything for the right amount of coin. But this was different. This was beyond any fumbled kiss he’d experienced in a linen closet.
