Page 28 of The Marquess Wins a Wife
“What?” she asked.
“School,” he repeated. “Surely you’ve considered it. If your tenants could be”—he paused, no doubt searching for a word delicate enough—“persuadedto pay their rents, Georgie could go to school.”
A soft gasp from the doorway. Georgie ought to have been in the library with Jo, scratching out sums upon his slate—but like many children, he had developed a propensity for eavesdropping. “Could I, Lizzie?” he asked, a thread of hope trembling in the words. “CouldI?”
Damnhis lordship. Damn him to hell and back, for giving Georgie even the slightest shred of hope. He hadn’t even the slightest idea of what he spoke, making promises that could not possibly be kept just for the chance of having a supper which did not consist of the gristliest bits of mutton. He could not possibly know how futile his harebrained scheme would turn out to be—how disappointed Georgie would be when it failed to come to fruition. How muchworseoff they would be, once he had returned to his comfortable London home and had forgotten them entirely, much less the havoc his presence had wrought upon their lives, their reputations.
And her heart sank still further as she realized she’d over-kneaded the dough. It clung to her fingers in a sticky, nasty mess—a fitting metaphor, she supposed, for the disorder his lordship had made of her life.
Chapter Thirteen
Luke knew, as the library door snapped shut behind them, that Lizzie was angry with him—again—though the causation of this particular snit was not so easily defined. But angry she was nonetheless. She had frizzed up like a spiteful little kitten, those dark eyes narrowed with ire. It was too bad; she would really be quite pretty if she hadn’t such a regrettable propensity to scowl. Not so pretty as Imogen—but then, Imogen was rather unfairly beautiful, for all that her ravishing glory was simply a pleasing film atop an absolutely spoilt center.
“I wish you wouldn’t stare at me.” Lizzie had settled her arms akimbo, white-knuckled fists pressed firmly to her hips.
“I beg your pardon. Where, then, am I meant to look? I had assumed you wished to have words, and that I was meant to give you my attention for them.” She did have that look about her, after all—the sort of look that suggested that the only thing which had prevented her from shouting at him had been her tenuous grip on her good manners. Which seemed swiftly to be deserting her, were he to judge by the hot color that had flooded her face.
There was no small amount of satisfaction to be had in needling her into an unseemly display of temper. And it was soeasyto provoke her into a delightful pique, wherein all of that adorable fury would come pouring out of her on a wave of charmingly excoriating words.
It made him wonder if her mouth would be as tart as her tongue. If her hair was half as soft as it looked. If those rumpled curls would wind around his fingers.
Christ.Where was his head? She’d damn well shoot him again if she suspected the bent of his thoughts—and this time she wouldmeanto do it. It was nothing more than a mad fantasy, anyway, owing to a lack of available women. Bloody village likely didn’t even have a brothel at which he might have relieved his sudden and inconvenient ache, and celibacy most certainly did not become him.
By the way Lizzie’s lips kept pursing as if to hold back the words she clearly kept tucked within the puff of her cheeks, he guessed she had rather a lot to take him to task for.
Luke settled himself at the edge of a decrepit-looking desk, folded his arms over his chest—and waited.
“You cannot say such things in Georgie’s hearing!” Lizzie burst out at last, her fingers fluttering in agitation, still coated in a fine dusting of flour.
“Whyever not?”
“He’s achild,” she spat. “He’ll get certain notions, and he will be disappointed when they do not come to fruition.”
“Why should they not? Surely the rents would cover the cost of his education.”
“If we had a single prayer of receiving them, of course they would.”
“Then I shall see that you receive them.”
Another little flutter of her fingers, though he was at a loss as to what she had meant to convey by it. “You cannot meddle in our affairs,” she said on a hiss. “Your very presence couldruinus!”
“Yes, well, you might have thought of that before youabductedme.” This he offered in a dry tone, idly inspecting his fingernails.
She made a low sound deep in her throat, dangerously close to a growl. “Everyoneknows that Papa is not frequently in residence,” she said. “Do you know what people will think, if you are known to be here when he is not?”
Interesting. “What will they think, Lizzie?” Slowly, he shoved himself away from the desk. “Tell me.”
Her lashes flickered, a mutinous tilt angling her chin. “Youknow.” Her hands dropped to her sides, fingers curling, but she did not retreat as he took one step forward, another—testing her mettle against his own. He suspected she had rather a lot of it. She would have to, to have brought up her siblings practically on her own. But he was no quarrelsome child she could stare into submission.
“I want to hear you say it,” he said. “If you’re going to make such claims, you should damn well be able tospeakthem. What will they think, Lizzie?”
A long swallow bobbed down her throat, disappearing beneath the unnecessarily high neckline of her drab navy gown. “They will imagine something…indecent. That you—that you and Imogen—”
“Imogen!” It was impossible to contain his amusement. He smothered it beneath his palm, scraping the astonished laughter from his face. “Imogen,” he said again. “Imogen—but not you?”
A startled laugh burbled from her throat. “No one thinks such things of me. Imogen is the beauty of the family. Even Jo is going to be a beauty someday.”
“What does that make you, then?” He posed the question in a tone of idle curiosity, and she did not flinch from it, or from the palm he pressed to the wall beside her head. She was made of sterner stuff than that, it seemed.
