Page 21 of The Marquess Wins a Wife
“Lizzie!” he whined, through a mouthful of egg. “Watch it, would you?”
“Georgie, it’s rude to talk with your mouth full,” she chastised, absent-mindedly as she slid a platter of toast onto a bare spot upon the table. “My lord, you needn’t have come down. Willie would have brought you a tray.”
Willie muttered something noncommittal—and vaguely insulting—beneath his breath, stuffing a crust of toast into his mouth to muffle the words. His eyes were all but buried beneath the bushy brows he’d drawn down into a glower.
“No need,” Luke heard himself mutter. “I’ll simply join you here.” There was an open space at the head of the table, and he drew back the chair; a rickety old thing that had clearly been scavenged from somewhere else.
The little girl seated beside her brother gasped in outrage. “That’s Lizzie’s chair!” Two bright spots of color rose into her cheeks, and she turned about in her chair. “Lizzie!That man—”
“Marquess.” Luke injected precisely the correct amount of disdain into his voice, the kind of tone that made grown men wither away from his icy glare, from the cool fire threaded through his words.
The child glared right back, wholly unimpressed. “That isLizzie’schair,” she said, tipping her chin up to that insolent angle that she had no doubt learned from her elder sister. “And I don’t carewhoyou are.”
Willie choked on his toast, hacking out a cough to disguise what had surely been a gusty laugh. Imogen averted her eyes to her plate. Georgie snorted into his cup of tea.
“Eat, then.” Lizzie produced a plate—perhaps the best-looking of the lot of mismatched china—and set it before him. “We don’t stand much on ceremony here. If you expect bowing and scraping, you’d do well to be on your way back to London. I’m certain your set would be happy to oblige.” She dismissed him with a simple turn of her head. “Imogen, the dishes are yours this morning.”
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly,” Imogen demurred, fluttering her fingers. “You know I am not well in the mornings, Lizzie. Perhaps Georgie—”
A stomp of a small foot beneath the table, coupled with the pugnacious tilt of the boy’s chin. “I did them yesterday!”
Luke suppressed a shudder of distaste as he reached for a piece of toast, since it seemed that nobody was particularly inclined to serve him. “It seems to me,” he said, “that as Miss Imogen is well enough to have consumed quite a good deal of breakfast, there is no reason she ought not to be capable of washing the dishes.”
A queer silence settled over the table. His opinion clearly had been neither necessary nor desired, but there was something satisfying about having tendered it anyway and setting the rest of them speechless. The crunch of his toast between his teeth was the only sound, harsh and loud in the oppressive silence. “I don’t suppose there’s any marmalade?”
“Well, I never!” Imogen snarled, her perfect peaches-and-cream complexion going a mottled red with outrage.
“If you trulyhadnever,” Luke said smoothly, “perhaps you would not be in your present condition.” The toast was gone too soon. He reached for another piece, relishing Imogen’s wordless sound of rage. Perhaps it was petty of him, but there was some small measure of satisfaction in ruffling the metaphorical feathers of the Talbot clan, none of whom seemed be particularly disposed to paying him the proper respect.
“Lizzie!” Imogen gasped, incensed. “You cannot allow him to speak to me like this!”
But what could she do for it? She had no power over him. She must have known it; he could see it in the tense line of her jaw, the blaze behind her dark irises—the white-knuckled grip of her hand on the handle of the aged teapot.
In retrospect, he should have taken that tightly-leashed ire for the warning that it had been.
With a tone a touch too sweet, Lizzie asked, “Tea, my lord?”
There was a trap within the words, and Luke narrowed his eyes. “Yes; if there’s no coffee.” He pushed his cup toward her, the sound of china sliding over rough wood jarring and challenging.
Lizzie leaned over, spine stiff, and poured a steady stream of tea straight into his lap.
“Christ!” Luke leapt up from his seat. “What thehell?”
Willie guffawed; a raucous sound of vindictive glee accompanied by a spray of scattered toast crumbs which spewed across the table.
“You are a guest in our home,” Lizzie said in a vicious snarl between teeth so tightly clenched that Luke fancied they were only a hair away from cracking beneath the pressure. “You will keep a civil tongue in your head,my lord.” Her gaze slid, pointedly, toward the two children watching with rapt attention at the unfurling scene.
Hell and damnation. Did shetrulyexpect him to guard his tongue simply because there happened to be childrenpresent? He’d had nothing to do with their conception; how could he possibly owe any responsibility to them? But he could see that she certainlydidexpect it—from the wrathful glare she had maintained over the long seconds that had elapsed, probably she had been only a hairsbreadth from washing his mouth out with soap.
Affronted pride forced him to snarl, “I was only—”
Lizzie lifted the teapot once more; a clear threat when accompanied by the gentle slosh of liquid remaining within. She reallywouldbaptize him anew, he realized.
“Fine,” he found himself snapping. “Civility might be a novel undertaking.” Certainly it was something he’d not been accused of in a good long while. It had beenyearssince last he’d been anything close to it.
“You may find your trousers hanging on the line outside,” Lizzie said, jerking her head toward the door leading from the kitchen to what Luke assumed was the garden. “They’re as clean as they’re going to get.”
Wonderful. “Have them taken to my—”
