Page 36 of The Scoundrel's Daughter
Lucy nodded. “Well, it was the goose, really. He’d stopped because of her. I just collected her off the road.” And held him up further, by giving him a piece of her mind as well.
Alice let out a muffled snort. “Agoose? Gerald lost his race because of a goose? Oh, he won’t like people knowing that.”
“No, and the way I was dressed, in my old clothes and an apron, and with my hair down and blowing about—I’m sure he thought me some kind of maidservant or farm girl. And the way he spoke to me, ordering me off the road as if he owned it—well, it was so, solordly, it made him want to cheek him. And so I did.” He’d been furious.
Alice was still chuckling. “A goose. No wonder he didn’t explain. But what were you doing with a goose anyway?”
“She’s the comtesse’s pet goose.”
“Your comtesse has a pet goose?”
Lucy nodded. “Apparently back in France at the height of the Terror, the comte was imprisoned in Paris—she heard later they chopped his head off—and the comtesse was alone in their castle in the country. One night something had stirred up the local peasants, and they marched on the castle carrying sickles and pitchforks and burning brands. The castle geese started hissing and honking like mad, and when she looked out to see what the matter was, she saw thepeasants coming for her. She managed to grab her jewels and escape, but her castle was burned to the ground.
“And ever since then she’s kept a pair of geese—Ghislaine and Gaston—to protect and warn her. But Ghislaine is naughty and likes to wander, and she wandered onto the road when your nephew was coming.”
“It was lucky he missed her.”
“He stopped, actually.” Lucy hadn’t expected that. Most lordly types she’d encountered would have driven straight over a goose. But then he’d shouted at her, and still shaken by the close encounter, she’d snapped and shouted back.
She wished now she hadn’t, because he obviously recognized her, even if he didn’t yet realize why.
“Ghislaine and Gaston, what a tale.” Alice sobered. “So you and that goose were the reason poor Gerald lost his precious race. Oh dear. He’s not likely to forget that. Or forgive.”
Lucy nodded. “I know. I’m going to have to avoid him. He already thinks he knows me from somewhere.”
“Yes, I see. It does make things rather awkward.”
“That’s why I wasn’t very polite to him tonight. I tried to give him a disgust of me so he won’t want to have anything to do with me in future.”
“It won’t be easy, seeing he’s my nephew.” Alice glanced at Lucy, her expression faintly embarrassed. “I wasn’t particularly polite to his friend, either.”
“The tall colonel?”
“He’s not a colonel anymore.”
“Is that why you were rude to him?”
“No, of course not. And I wasn’t rude, exactly, just not very encouraging.”
Lucy was perplexed. “But he liked you, I could tell.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want to encourage him.”
“Why not? What’s wrong with him? Was he too forward? Coarse? Suggestive?” Men often were, in Lucy’s experience. Especially lordly types. But surely they wouldn’tbehave like that to a proper, gentle lady like Lady Charlton, would they?
“No, no, nothing like that. He was a perfect gentleman.” Alice sighed. “It doesn’t matter. I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”
***
Hours later Alice lay in bed, sleepless, twisting, restless between her sheets. She couldn’t get Lord Tarrant out of her mind. He’d behaved perfectly politely—apart from initially addressing her without being introduced. So why had she reacted to him that way?
He hadn’t made any kind of nasty proposition—he’d just looked at her with an expression in his eyes, an expression she didn’t even know the meaning of—and she’d fled from his presence like a nervous virgin, which lord knew she wasn’t.
Somehow, he’d stirred sensations in her—with just a look from those hypnotic eyes, like a winter lake, silver against the tan of his skin. Sensations she’d never felt before. Sensations she didn’t want to feel.
I don’t yet know what pleases you.
Yet.As if it were some kind of promise. No one had ever cared to discover what pleased her.
