Free A Dangerous Love by Sabrina Jeffries Page B

better?”
    The thought of remaining in this limbo any longer made Percival shudder, yet he was hardly in a position to protest. Still, he must not let the man drag his feet for long. There was not much time. “Very well. Stay here for a while to acquaint yourself with my daughters. In a week or so, we’ll discuss this again.”
    Knighton’s smooth smile unnerved Percival. “Thank you, m’lord. I promise you won’t regret it.”

Chapter 6
Won’t you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you .
Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Anglo-Irish playwright and owner of Drury Lane Theatre, to a young lady
    T he man was sly, she’d give him that, Rosalind thought as she swept ahead of Mr. Brennan into the deer park. It had taken her all morning, but she’d finally figured out what he was up to.
    “Don’t tell me, let me guess,” he said behind her in his annoyingly snide tone. “We’re entering the Forest of Arden.”
    “You’re thinking of a different part of the shire,” she said dryly. “This is our deer park. It is widely accounted to be the finest in all of Warwickshire.”
    She sucked in a deep breath of woodruff-scented air and held it, eager for his answer. If her theory were correct, he would now expound upon the deer park’s faults as he had with all the other portions of the estate she’d shown him this morning.

    Well, she would call him a liar to his face if he did. No one could possibly object to the deer park. Papa himself had overseen its progress through years of careful management.
    With the air of a man examining a property for purchase, he scrutinized his surroundings. “It well warrants such praise.”
    She nearly collapsed in surprise. The man was actually admitting that some part of Swan Park met his high standards! “Do you mean to tell me that it does not ‘require improvement’?” That had been his claim for every single room in the manor house.
    He raised an eyebrow. “No, I don’t think it does.”
    “You certainly can’t call it a ‘funeral pyre for foliage’ as you did the greenhouse,” she persisted.
    “Very true.”
    “But wait, the deer park is dirty—I had forgotten how important cleanliness is to you. It must be, if you could call our dairy unclean. Your assertion came as quite a shock to my dairy manager, the woman we have all nicknamed Mrs. White Glove.”
    It was that absurd assertion that had led Rosalind to figure out his scheme. The foolish man apparently intended to provoke her into fleeing his disagreeable company, leaving him free to roam the estate alone.
    His lips were twitching now. “Ah, but a deer park is supposed to have a certain amount of dirt, is it not?”
    “It is indeed.” She steered left to avoid tripping over a fallen tree that protruded into the path. Would he pounce on that as a potential danger to deer and hunter alike? Curious to see if he would, she halted in the path and faced him, sweeping her hand in an arc about her. “Do you mean to tell me that you see nothing whatsoever in our deer park tocomplain about? No flaws, no hazards, no disappointments?”
    “Oh, it’s a lovely deer park, I’ll grant you that.” His eyes twinkled. “But I don’t think it wise to allow the woods to remain so thick this close to the house, do you?”
    She couldn’t help it—a laugh exploded out of her. Yes, the elms did crowd in upon the lawn, and the oaks seemed on the verge of squeezing the footpath out of existence, but that had always been one of the deer park’s peculiar charms. And he knew it, too, the scoundrel, even if he was standing there looking at her with an expression of complete innocence.
    “I’m sorry you find it lacking,” she said, “though I believe the deer like it. They seem to prefer having a lot of trees about—probably something to do with staying hidden from hunters and hounds.” An impish impulse seized her. “But I may be wrong. Perhaps we should find some and ask them?”
    A smile played about his lips.