Free Not Wicked Enough by Carolyn Jewel Page B

rapidly buttoned it. “An improvement, I hope.”
     
    “No.” She examined him from head to toe. “Your valet ought to be dismissed.”
     
    “So you’ve said, Wellstone.”
     
    “I don’t think I have.”
     
    “You have in my dreams.”
     
    She braced herself against showing how his remarkstartled her. “I swoon, your grace, to think I have been honored to appear in your dreams.”
     
    “Did I say dreams? I meant nightmares.”
     
    “Your coat, sir, is as atrocious as your waistcoat. But I did not ask for this interview to chastise you for your attire.”
     
    “No?” A note of something wild curled around the edges of his voice.
     
    She sat on a sofa with a large harp set at an angle to one end and gestured for him to take the chair across from her. As he did, she slid a finger over the strings of the harp. The instrument was out of tune. “For a time, in my extreme youth, I had harp lessons. I did not enjoy them.”
     
    “I thought all young ladies enjoyed their music lessons.”
     
    “Did you enjoy yours?”
     
    “Farmers do not have the luxury of a musical education.”
     
    “You’re not a farmer.”
     
    “Did you mean to ask me if I could play you a song on the harp? I can’t.”
     
    She set the phosphorus beside her. Mountjoy eyed the jar. “It’s tightly sealed, your grace.”
     
    “It had better be.”
     
    “It is. I assure you. But please. It’s your sister I wish to speak to you about. I knew her when her husband was alive, how happy and in love she was. I saw her in her grief when he died. When you came to take her home, I thought, thank goodness. She’ll have someone to look after her. Family upon whom to rely.”
     
    “She has that,” he said.
     
    Lily sniffed then glanced down and winced. The man was in need of a decent bootmaker, too. “My God,” she said in a low voice. “Those boots.” No amount of polish or oil could save his footwear. She shook her head. “Now that I am here, your grace, it is my particular aim to see your sister amused.” She folded her hands on her lap. “It’s something you and Lord Nigel have failed to do. You ought both of you to be ashamed. I intend to continue to encourage herto leave the house, make calls, and engage in divers recreation that will refresh her heart.”
     
    “Wellstone, please believe that I do not for a moment doubt your devotion to my sister—”
     
    “If writing sentences with a phosphorus pencil amuses your sister, and it did, sir, then how can you object to that?”
     
    His eyes widened. “Because it is dangerous.”
     
    “Oh, pshaw. We’d been writing for some time before you interrupted us. In fact, Lord Nigel, Miss Kirk, and your sister had already had their turn.”
     
    “I object to my house burning down.”
     
    She lifted her hands, palms up, and looked from side to side. “Your house has not burned down.”
     
    He spread his thighs and propped his hands on his knees as he leaned forward. “Pure luck.”
     
    “Hardly.”
     
    “The quill burst into flames. You might have brought the house down.”
     
    She snorted. “Tell me, do you come home every day and say to yourself, ‘Thank God, today I was not savaged by wolves’? Or ‘killed by a runaway carriage’?”
     
    He yanked on his cravat. There was at least no way to make it look any worse. He would be passionate in bed, she was certain. Capable of gentleness, but more than able to set tenderness aside if the moment called for more. “There are no wolves in England.”
     
    “Precisely my point.”
     
    “But there are runaway carriages, and when I am in the presence of one, yes, I am grateful to continue among the living.” He leaned back on his chair and raked his fingers through his hair. Such beautiful, thick hair. She wanted to run her fingers through his hair again. “Phosphorus is a dangerous substance.”
     
    “So is gunpowder. Have you removed every trace of it from your estate?”
     
    “Of course not. There