Page 27 of His Wicked Secret
“Gillian, I’m going to check on the pineapples. Horatia asked me if I could.”
“Pineapples?” Her maid’s confusion shadowed her questioning eyes. Gillian knew full well that Horatia had not mentioned any pineapples when they had arrived.
“Yes. Thepineapples.” Audrey stared hard at Gillian, hoping she would take the hint and play along. Gillian would assume that Audrey was trying to avoid Jonathan, which was partly true. But her main goal was to have James and Gillian spend some time alone together.
“Oh…yes…” Gillian played along. “I do hope they are growing well.”
“That is exactly what I shall go and investigate.” Audrey headed straight for the succession houses, relieved and disappointed to find she was alone. Jonathan had not come after her.
8
Jonathan watched Audrey stride away from the succession houses and was torn between laughing and growling in frustration.
Pineapples. What poppycock.
The sprite was avoiding him and using the ruse of fruits to do it. He was tempted to go after her, especially seeing the way her hips swayed back and forth in her delightful colored skirts. He’d teased her endlessly about such gowns, but one had to admit the woman knew how to dress—and how to torture a man with thoughts of stripping her out of those clothes.
Once she was out of sight, he left James and Gillian and returned to the house. He needed help, and there was only one person he felt he could turn to. He found his intended counselor reading in the library.
“Charles.” Jonathan shrugged out of his coat and joined Charles at a table. It was midmorning. He and James had arrived early at the grand country estate, but Charles had traveled a day ahead of them, and as suchhadalready settled in.
The Earl of Lonsdale glanced up from the book he was reading and quirked a brow in silent invitation.
Jonathan swallowed hard, reluctant to ask for help but seeing no other choice. “I need your advice.”
“From me? Good Lord, must be desperate. I’m the very last man anyone should come to for advice.” Charles leaned back in his chair, setting down the book he’d been reading. “Unless you wish to talk about women, boxing, or gambling.” He smirked. “So which of those three can I assist you with?”
Jonathan picked up the book his friend had been reading and glanced at the spine.Lady Audrina and the Arrogant Gentleman. “You’ve read L. R. Gloucester?” Jonathan stared for a second at the lurid Gothic novel. “Wait, you actually read for pleasure?”
Charles’s gray eyes lit up with challenging fire. “Why does everyone assume I don’t read? Iloveto read, and yes, Lucien got me onto these Gothic novels. Very inappropriate.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Heaving bosoms, seductions, dark towers and the like. What’s not to enjoy, eh? Besides, it can be quite useful in more playful seductions, which the ladies quite enjoy.” Charles nodded at the book. “You have to read that one. Lady Audrina is a bit like the Sheridan girl.”
“Indeed.” Jonathan handed the book back to Charles.
Charles held up a hand in refusal. “No, I insist. I’ve read this one twice myself. You ought to read it. Theclimaxwill put some fire back in your blood, eh?” He chuckled. “Now, what is it you need advice on?”
“The aforementioned girl.”
“Ah. Still running circles around you, is she?”
Jonathan threw himself into a chair across from Charles. “Yes.”
Charles gave a deep laugh, and Jonathan cringed. He already felt like a fool for coming, and this didn’t help matters. “And you all wonder why I have no desire to be married. If the lady has run you so ragged before she’s even dragged you to the altar, Lord knows what fresh hell she will put you through once you’re leg-shackled.”
Charles’s grim view of matrimony wasn’t surprising; he had always been a bit of a wild one, certainly the wildest of the League. He knew about women, yet he always kept them at a certain distance. But he was always there for his friends or to lend his expertise in whatever way he could. Jonathan liked him immensely. Charles was the sort of man Jonathan used to enjoy meeting up with in the local taverns on his off days. There was a freedom to being around Charles, a careless disregard for anything that most other people would fret over. If Charles didn’t worry over something, it didn’t seem to be worth worrying about.
“So, out with it,” Charles said. He was no longer the youngest pup in the League, and he’d taken Jonathan under his wing, something Jonathan had appreciated. Despite his growing closeness with his half brother, there was always a feeling of distance because of the past they shared, and that meant he couldn’t ask his brother things he could ask Charles about.
“I believe I made a mistake.”
Charles’s gray eyes turned bright. “A mistake? Nowthatdoes sound interesting. What kind of mistake?”
“I had intended to propose to her, but I waited too long.”
“How come?”
“I wished to have my household up and running and my status in thetonmore secure before I asked her to be my wife.” Jonathan toyed with the book in his hands, watching the afternoon sunlight catch on the gold-painted edges of the paper. He wondered idly how the bookmakers did that, made the edges glitter with color. He used to sneak into Godric’s library to admire the books and read them when he had the time. “It would not do to go into a matter of matrimony unprepared.”
Charles’s lip twitched. “That sounds far too reasonable to be a mistake.”
