Page 20 of Ruthless with a Rogue
“Do you have a quill and ink?”
“Yes, of course.On the desk.”
Derek swiftly walked over to the desk and grabbed the quill and inkpot.He brushed the feather of the quill over his chin, his mind turning over on the best way to do the computation.Then he began scribbling down figures.He underlined the final figure on the paper: 75.99%.
He spun toward her.“You could not have possibly done that in your head.”
Her brows furrowed adorably.“Because I am a woman?”
He narrowed his eyes at her and leaned forward.“No, not because you’re a woman.Because that is one”—he held up a finger—“a difficult concept, and two”—he held up a second finger—“complicated math to do without quill and parchment.”
She tilted her head, a pretty, befuddled expression crossing her face and wrinkling her nose.No.Not pretty.Bloody hell, he needed a drink.Just not her whisky.
“Not particularly,” she was saying.“The probability of success would just be one minus the probability of all the matrons rejecting me.That’s simple enough.”
He said nothing.Because yes, it might be a simple concept, but it wasn’t asimple computation.
She blinked at him earnestly.“No, it truly is.Here, let’s do it now!”
She bounced in her seat, and his eyebrows jumped to his hairline.That was…quite a bit of excitement over computations.
“What is the chance they all reject me?Seventy percent for each one.Which is seventy percent raised to the fourth.Seventy percent multiplied by seventy percent is forty-nine percent.Percentages always throw me off, so let’s leave those off for now.”She swatted the air with her hand, an imaginary percentage going flying.
“Forty-nine squared is just messy, don’t you agree?”She looked at him as if she’d just said something as obvious asthe sky is blue.
He glanced from side to side.“I…suppose.”
“Excellent, same page.So, we’ll compute fifty squared instead, which is 2,500.But we need to take off one-fifty because we only want forty-nine, so that puts us at 2,450.Simple, yes?”
He dipped his chin slowly.Sure… Simple…
“However, that is fifty forty-nines.We wantforty-nineforty-nines.So, take off forty-nine and you’re at 2,401.So, the probability of rejection is 24.01%.One minus that is 75.99% or the probability of success!”She clapped her hands once in front of her, smiling.“See, not difficult at all.”
Derek stared dumbly—which he truly felt after all that, and he was a smart man—his jaw once again on the floor.This woman was remarkable.Her mind… His cock twitched, something hot and heavy settling in his groin.He’d never met another woman like her.
He had to have her.
Maybe he’d have her do computations while she rode him.
He nearly groaned.Did he have a proclivity for probability?
Based on the tightness of his breeches…
The odds were embarrassingly high.
14
Livy
Livy’ssmilefaded.LordDunmore had been silent for some time now.Long enough that she was beginning to fear she was going to start sprouting grey hairs.He glowered at her, a muscle ticking in his jaw.
With every heartbeat, her face grew warmer and warmer, and inside, she grew colder and colder.She’d gotten carried away.When Lord Dunmore hadn’t seemed thrown off by her interest in mathematics, she’d let her guard down.He’d seemed to accept her unusual interest so readily.She’d forgotten to hold herself back.To hide her deftness with numbers.
Her eyes slid shut.When he’d doubted her ability to do the calculation, her affront had gotten the best of her.That was always her failing.Her wayward tongue would be her demise.She knew she needed to hide her intelligence, but she also wanted to throw rocks at all the oafs who believed her head was vacant behind her blue eyes.Now Lord Dunmore surely thought she was a freak.Disappointment dragged down her shoulders.
Opening one eye, she peeked at Lord Dunmore.He studied her, head tipped at an angle that had his roguish waves falling distractingly over his brow.She was going to lose his assistance, she just knew it.Could she convince him to continue to help her?
“Forgive me, my lord.I—” She faltered.She didn’t know how to explain away her slip.How did she recover from this?She stared down at her lap, worrying her bottom lip.Her lip.Her lips!She could let him kiss her.Surely he’d forget the slip if she did that.
