Page 34 of The Marquess Wins a Wife
She had been washing cups and preparing fresh pots of tea forhours. Her fingers were pruned, and she’d developed a crick in her neck from the strain of carrying the heavy tea service up and down the stairs all morning.
The children could be forgiven for not helping, considering that they were busy with their lessons, but Imogen—Imogen was merely lazing about in her room, peering out the window at each new arrival and sighing dramatically when it failed to be her Mr. Wycombe, who still had not come.
Lizzie had suggested earlier that some help would have been appreciated, but she suspected that Imogen had deliberately misunderstood her, as she had simply waved one hand dismissively and said, “Tea would be lovely, Lizzie. I’ll take sugar and milk.”
And Lizzie had simply not had the time to disabuse her of the notion. Not with the never-ending cascade of visitors who kept arriving and likelywoulduntil the end of time. She had had to juggle the influx of them with a careful hand—at one point there had been no less than four people awaiting their judgment in her drawing room whilst Luke ripped his latest victim to shreds above stairs.
There—a door opening upstairs. Distantly, she could hear Mr. Dandridge as he took his leave. “I’ll have the rest for you, my lord, I swear it.”
“Not forme,” Luke snapped, and his voice was the roughed burr of someone who had spent a good deal of the day venting his frustrations. “You owe it to theTalbots.”
“The Talbots,” Dandridge said. “Yes. Yes, of course. It’s only that I didn’t know that they—that you—” A stuttering breath. “No one could have known that they were so well-connected.”
“Naturally, rents are only owed to those so connected,” Luke said acidly. “A man need not fulfil an obligation to anyone he deems beneath the honor.” A scathing sound. “Get out of my fucking sight, Dandridge.”
Lizzie crossed paths with Dandridge on the stairs, and he studiously averted his gaze. Apparently the toes of his shoes were a far more compelling sight. The door stood just slightly ajar, and she rapped upon it as she walked in.
Luke had reclaimed his seat at the desk, his hand shading his eyes.
“Mr. Cole is here for you,” she said.
“He can damn well wait.” A heartfelt sigh escaped his lips. “My head aches like the devil. You should come over here and rub it for me.”
“Probably it would not ache so if you spent less time shouting at people.”
“If they did not wish to be shouted at, perhaps they ought to have paid their damned rents.” He slanted her a doleful look from beneath the shade of his hand. “Incidentally, by my estimate you should have enough to send Georgie off to Eton in style by”—he stole a glance at the clock—“approximately two o’clock.”
Her heart gave a vicious little kick in her chest. “You’re not serious.”
“Come rub my head, and I’ll even go so far as to tell you where I’ve stashed it.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, his brows drawing together. Lizzie suspected he was doing his level best to look appropriately pathetic and miserable. It didn’t suit him in the least. He hadn’t even looked particularly pathetic when she’d thought he was dying of fever.Miserable, yes. But notpathetic.
Still she hesitated just inside the room. Mr. Cole was downstairs still, and so were the Sheltons, and she suspected another knock at the front door would come soon enough—
“Just for a moment,” he wheedled, and that sharp blue gaze softened enough to plead with her. “No one will know.”
Her fingers itched to touch his hair again, to feel those smooth, silky locks between them. She curled her hands into fists, pressing her blunt nails into her palms. “I have guests to see to—”
“Flip a coin for it, then?” The corner of his mouth kicked up, and there was just a hint of a taunt in the right-hand corner. A dare. “We like a wager, you and I—don’t we?”
Some strange, warm sensation spread through her stomach. It shouldn’t have been a tempting offer. Sheknewbetter. And yet she didn’t make a sound as he retrieved a coin from his pocket, flipped it through the air with a flick of his thumb, and called out, “Heads.”
The coin landed with a clatter on the desk, rolled a couple of inches, and dropped. A brilliant grin spread across his face. “Better luck next time, darling. Now, if you don’t mind—”
But the coin was too far away for her to see for herself, and so Lizzie crossed the floor in swift strides as he reached for the coin, batting his hand away to look upon it before he could tuck it back in his pocket.
Heads. Her stomach gave a funny little flip.
“What, don’t you trust me?” The note of petulance in his voice startled a little laugh from her.
“Not as far as I can throw you.”
He chuckled as he retrieved the coin and shoved it back in his pocket. “Smart,” he said, leaning back in the chair and stretching out his legs until the heels of his boots landed upon the desk. “Fair’s fair, Lizzie.” That lightly mocking expression lingered even as he closed his eyes expectantly.
That dark hair gleamed in the sunlight streaming through the window. Her palms itched beneath the firm press of her nails. “One minute,” she said.
Those eyes flashed open. “One minute!”
“Fair’s fair,” she parroted. “You ought to have bargained for better.”
