Page 18 of Three Weeks with a Princess
“You mean you think you know me. Now, would you like me to ring for something to eat?”
She shifted and sat up in her chair. “Thank you, but I think not. I don’t have much of an appetite, as it turns out.”
He studied her face, noticing the shadows under her eyes and the tight set to a mouth that was normally generous, lush, and tilted up in a smile. She looked worried and nervous. But Lia had never been nervous with him—not once that he could remember. It sent a faint chill of warning up his spine.
“That bad, is it?” he said, forcing a light tone.
“You have no idea,” she said with a sigh.
“Then I suppose there’s no point in putting it off, is there?” He took his seat.
It seemed odd to be sitting across from her like this— the all-powerful lord of the manor at his desk. It still felt awkward, and he wondered if the feeling would ever fade.
Lia was staring down at the floor, her arms resting on her knees and her hands clasped in a tight knot. “I don’t know where to start, Jack.”
“You know I will always do anything I can to help you, my dear.”
She flashed him a rueful smile. “Like that time you rescued me from the chimney?”
When she was six years old, she’d taken it into her head to become a chimney sweep. She’d wedged herself into the flue in her grandmother’s bedroom and gotten stuck. Jack had been terrified that she’d hurt herself, but she’d begged him not to tell her grandmother or run for help. He’d finally managed to extract her with only a few scrapes and bruises, but she’d emerged covered with soot and her clothes more or less in tatters. She’d simply giggled uproariously, chalking the whole episode up as a grand adventure.
Lia nodded. “I know. You’ve always been my best friend. No one could ask for a better one.”
Her words set off a pang in his chest. Other than the servants on the estate, Lia had no friends, and no confidants besides her grandmother and him. In so many ways, she’d existed in an odd sort of isolation—not alone, but without the relationships any normal girl in a country village should have.
He forced aside the weight of guilt that pressed down on him. No matter what it took, he would do right by her. Lia could never be just an obligation to him. Yes, he’d rather neglected her these last several years, but she mattered to him in a way that few people in his life ever had.
“Good,” he said. “Now that we’ve agreed that I’m a perfectly splendid fellow, why don’t you tell me what Aunt Rebecca is worried about?”
“It’s not that she’s worried exactly. It’s something she, er, wants you to do.”
It wasn’t like Lia to hedge. “Pet, we haven’t got all day. Just spit it out.”
She sighed. “Very well. But please do remember that it wasn’t my idea.”
“I give you my word.”
Sitting up straight, she met his gaze. “Granny wants you to become my protector.”
That was a puzzling choice of words. “Of course I’ll protect you. Didn’t I make that clear yesterday?”
“Yes, but not my protector in a general way. She means protector in a rather specific way.”
The vague conversation began to frustrate him. “I’m not sure what else I can do to address her concerns, other than to say that I will provide for anything you need.”
She looked over at the window, shaking her head and muttering under her breath.
“Perhaps you could clarify what she means byspecific,” Jack suggested.
Lia finally looked at him, her checks blazing as red as apples. “Granny wants me to be your mistress, you nodnock. She wants you to be my lover. Is that clear enough for you?”
Jack probably looked like a fish who’d landed on a bank, stunned and gasping for breath. And the entire time he stared at her, Lia glared back at him, looking furious and embarrassed. And anything but loverlike.
He finally marshaled the few wits that hadn’t been stunned into insensibility. “Clear? It’s insane. Take you as my mistress? How your grandmother could come up with such a ridiculous notion is beyond me. It’s simply laughable.”
He felt as if someone had knocked him on the head with a brick. And even more appalling, now that she’d put the idea into his head, some part of his brain—well, not his brain actually—thought there was some merit to the notion. How could it not, when she looked as she did now, her cheeks flushed, her gorgeous eyes snapping with fury, and her pretty breasts pushing up over the simple trim of her bodice with each indignant and huffy breath.
Get a handle, you idiot. He would no more take Lia as his mistress than he would don minstrel’s garb and caper about in Hyde Park.
