Free I Love the Earl by Caroline Linden

will escort you back to your brother, who will no doubt be appalled by your actions.”
    Rhys felt her slightly shocked glance, and wanted to punch Branwell in the face. How dare that priggish hypocrite poke his nose into the concerns of others? “No need, sir,” he said thinly. “I’m escorting Miss de Lacey this evening.”
    The marquis physically recoiled. He shot Margaret a look of pure disdain before turning the same expression on Rhys. “So I see. I might have known you would try to remedy your problems by luring a woman into ruin. Your father would be ashamed.”
    Rhys curled his mouth in grim imitation of a smile, and swept an elaborate bow. Branwell hissed in disapproval. Without a word of farewell he turned on his heel and walked away.
    The silence was ringing. All the heat and glow of the kiss had faded into nothing, like a fire put out by a bucket of cold water.
    “Not a friend of yours, I presume,” said Margaret softly after a minute.
    “No,” he muttered. “Rather the opposite.”
    Her skirts rustled as she came to stand beside him. “I hear such wicked things of you,” she said. “Everyone except Clarissa assures me you’re purely after my fortune and are such a rascal, my ears would burn to hear of it. And yet my own eyes tell me something different.” She paused. “I’m sure I wouldn’t have to beg a true scoundrel to kiss me.”
    He smiled without humor. “What do your eyes tell you about me? I confess I would like to know.”
    She studied him. “You dance with my friend, when other gentlemen laugh at her looks and snub her for her frankness. You are cordial to her fiancé, whom society mocks as a dim-witted fool. You bow out when I tease you that your company discourages other men from asking me to dance. You say you want to marry me, but then talk to me of politics and business, of family and home—of things that truly matter to me—rather than flirting and praising my fine eyes. And now a man insults you to your face, and you bow as if he did you great honor. I cannot understand it.”
    “No?” He sighed. “Perhaps it makes no sense.”
    “It makes sense,” she said slowly, “if you are an exceedingly cagey fellow who will go to great lengths to fool me about the depths of your devotion. Or . . . if you really care to know me.”
    Rhys looked down at her. Her face, even turned up to his, was dim and shadowed in the faint moonlight, but he remembered the feel of her lips against his, of her cheek against his. He’d meant to tell her all this, but not tonight, when he wanted only to revel in the passion that sparkled between them. His courtship had gone almost perfectly, from the discovery that they were well suited to each other in intellect, temperament, humor, and now physical desires. He was sure he could have proposed tonight and been accepted, if not for the yawning difference in their financial states and the aspersions it cast on his motives. Cursed Branwell.
    “I dance with Miss Stacpoole because it gives her as much pleasure as it gives me. Eccleston is no scholar but he’s a decent, honest man and a steadfast fellow. He doesn’t care how I choose to address my financial straits.” He paused, but there was no way to avoid it. The marquis would surely tell her brother, and this was his only chance to explain before others told Margaret Branwell’s version of the tale. “Branwell was my guardian—my father’s cousin who managed my estates until I reached my majority.”
    “He—what?” she exclaimed. “You said your guardian squandered the estate!”
    “He doesn’t see it that way.” Rhys shrugged, trying to keep the familiar, well-worn ire at bay. “I notice he didn’t make the same investments with his own funds, though. But he will never forgive me for revealing how low the Dowling fortunes had sunk when I came of age, casting well-earned blame for it on him.”
    “Revealing,” she repeated. “How does one hide it? Especially a marked reduction in