Free How I Met My Countess by Elizabeth Boyle Page A

winced in pain.
    “Exactly, Lucy,” Clifton chimed in. “No man likes being taken advantage of. Nor does he forget when he is.”
    He raised his glass to her, but she had to imagine he wasn’t toasting her. He’d told her exactly how he felt about her part in all this.
    And that he wasn’t the type to forget either.
    With the pitcher emptied, the earl excused himself, shaking hands with his former adversaries and wishing them well before returning upstairs.
    As for her part in all this, Lucy noted, he didn’t offer her the same courtesy.
    But once he was gone, she shook her head at the pair of dodgers before her. “Should I tell my father you got beaten?”
    Sammy’s eyes narrowed. “Should we be tellin’ your da what you and that toff were about to do afore we stopped you?”
    Wretched bastard. He had her there.
    “That won’t be necessary,” she replied, feeling her cheeks grow hot.
    “Think you might owe us a bit more than our usual fees,” Rusty told her. “You know, for our troubles and all.”
    Lucy wanted nothing more than to hold her ground, but she knew there was no bluffing these two rats. They smelled a chance to line their pockets, and this time they weren’t going to lose.
    Heaving a disgruntled sigh, she went over to the cupboard and got down an old blue sugar pot. Reaching in, she collected a few coins more, then made a note to move the sugar pot before they came back to visit again.
    “Thought as much, Goosie-me-girl,” Sammy said as she dropped the yellow coins into his open hand. “Not your type anyway, if you don’t mind me saying. Yer a sensible gel. Not the sort to let a fancy bit of fine words and sweet talk tell you different. But I’ll remind you here and now, he’ll never love you like one of us would.”
    She pointed to the door and they went to leave. She didn’t need any lectures from the likes of them.
    “Aye, Goosie, just say the word—,” Rusty said, doffing his hat and giving her a saucy wink as he picked up the earl’s discarded steak and dropped it into his pocket before she pushed him the rest of the way out the door.
    “You don’t have to worry about me,” she told them as they lumbered down the garden path. “I know the likes of him will never offer a girl like me naught but empty promises.”
    Oh, but for a moment there …
    For a moment she could have forgotten such things and let herself believe that the Earl of Clifton would look twice at her.
    That he’d see beyond the walls she’d built around her heart, be the sort willing and daring enough to breach them.
    Still, even as the garden gate shut behind them, clanging in her ears much like Sammy’s warning, her gaze rose unbidden to the window of her father’s map room overhead.
    But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t fall in love with him.

Chapter 5
    Clifton came down from Mr. Ellyson’s map room a quarter past midnight, his head pounding with all the information his taskmaster was trying to cram into the confines between his ears.
    That, or it was the lingering effects of meeting up with Rusty and Sammy.
    And Lucy …
    There was no denying it now. She was Lucy to him.
    He set aside that thought. At least he tried, as he had most of the afternoon, moving from anger over being tricked by that cheeky bit of muslin to regret that he hadn’t taken advantage of her just a bit quicker.
    At least then, in addition to a headache, he could claim to have tasted her sweet, lying lips.
    “We haven’t studied this much since Cambridge,” Malcolm was muttering behind him. “I don’t remember Temple or Jack mentioning all this work when they came calling to recruit us.”
    “Who are you trying to deceive? You never studied at school to begin with,” Clifton said over his shoulder. “Let alone be able to recall what Temple and Jack said that night.”
    Malcolm grinned. “Oh, that was a fine evening. Temple has the best taste in claret. Probably would have agreed to anything he set before us, as muddled as