Free The Proposition by Judith Ivory Page B

the long side though than the loovly side," she added.
    "Well, long and loovly, yes." He laughed, too, possibly at her attempt at his word, at her saying it less naturally than he did.
    He stood there, his chest reverberating with that low, base-drum sound again. While Edwina released herself into her own laughter, letting it out softly, letting it go till it ended of its own accord. The two of them slowly calmed till they were just looking at each other.
    And there it was: For an instant, reality permutated. For an instant—villainous black mustache and all—a handsome gentleman smiled on her. It seemed suddenly plausible that a man could find her appealing. In a loovly sort of way. Mind-boggling, but plausible.
    Then a moment later she truly did want to burst out laughing. For here in the half-lit corridor, of course, was only mousy, lanky Winnie Bollash—being flattered by a ratcatcher who didn't know any better.
    She sighed, both her smile and the nice feeling dissipating into that sure piece of truth. She stepped back, pulling her dressing gown up tight, wrapping her arms around herself. "Please don't go into the study. It was my father's."
    "Your father's?"
    "He's gone now. Dead."
    "Sympathies, loov."
    "Thank you." She nodded. "It was a while ago."
    He hesitated a moment, only a moment, then said, "You should have the room then. Your father don't need it now."
    Edwina looked away, as if around them she might see something besides the dark landing. "The whole house was his," she said. "I've taken over all the rest, made it my own, but I've left his study as it was." She murmured, "I use it as the masculine place to take my ladies, to show them how to be comfortable in a man's world." She laughed without humor. "A good joke, don't you think? I'm not very comfortable in such a world myself. Except in that room. My carefully preserved upper-class male habitat." Like a museum, she thought.
    She'd said too much already. "Good night." She walked past him, into the study, ostensibly to put out the light. Then she thought to ask, "You have everything, yes?"
    He nodded. The question, she realized, was just an excuse to look at him in better light. He stood just beyond the doorway in the corridor, partly in light, partly in shadow. The study's electric bulb threw sharp definition up the front of him: Her father's trousers were too short; they came to the top of his boots. Chances were, under the long shirttail, the trousers weren't buttoned. The vest without doubt couldn't be. No cravat, no collar.
    None of this stopped Mick Tremore from being handsome, however. His jaw was square, chiseled. He had a straight, high-bridged nose—a Roman nose that, with his deep brow, shadowed his eyes like a ledge. He was striking, there was no doubt about it. Elegant, she thought again. Not just good-looking. Handsome in a polished way that defied explanation. The luck of heritage, an accident of features. Whatever made him so, it was a stroke of good fortune for her—and for Jeremy Lamont. It was much easier to pass a man off as a gentleman when he lined up with preconceptions of what a splendid one looked like.
    Which, she realized, in another sense was not a stroke of luck for her at all.
    "Good night," she said again.
    She went into the study, but delayed pulling the chain on the light. She made herself dawdle, reshelving a book, realigning a vase. She didn't let herself look back at him, not once. Even though she knew he watched her, waiting. It was at least a full minute before she heard his footfalls turn then walk the short distance to his room at this end of the hall.
    Good. Once he was gone, she put the light out, then went back to bed.
    * * *
    Edwina gave herself a good talking-to as she lay back down into her sheets.
    He was lying. Don't believe him. Long and loovly, indeed. He was romanticizing, at the very least.
    She herself was no romantic. She knew her own narrow face, the thin blade of her nose with its bony bump on the