Free A Little Scandal by Patricia Cabot Page A

Geoffrey Saunders was possibly the only thing that could still send him into a rage.
    “But I’m not angry.” Burke was making an effort to sound calm. “Not a bit.”
    The girl behind the podium said, “I don’t believe you. You look very angry.”
    “But I’m not.” Burke took a deep breath. “Miss Mayhew, are you under the impression that I might strike you?”
    “You have something of a reputation for violence, my lord,” she said, readily enough.
    Burke felt he really would like to break something, preferably the podium she was clutching so hard. He felt as if he would like very much to rip it out of her hands and hurl it through the hideous stained-glass window on the opposite side of the room. But then he remembered he’d given up that kind of thing, and he controlled the impulse.
    “I’m afraid I must take umbrage at that, Miss Mayhew,” he said instead. “While I certainly haven’t made any sort of effort to restrain my inclinations toward force where men might be concerned, I have never in my life struck a woman.”
    He saw her slim fingers loosen from the sides of the atlas stand. “I’m sorry, my lord,” she said. “But the look on your face, when I said I couldn’t come work for you—it was rather … startling.”
    “Are you afraid of me?” Burke demanded irritably. “Is that why you won’t accept the position? You certainly weren’t afraid of me the other night, when you tried to skewer me with your umbrella. Why should you be frightened of me now? Unless ….” He experienced another wave of annoyance. It wasn’t anger. He refused to call it anger. “Unless someone’s been prattling to you about me. About my past.”
    “Not at all,” Miss Mayhew said, too quickly.
    “They have.” Burke glared at her. “How else would you know about my reputation for violence? Well, you already thought me a vile abuser of innocent women. It must be gratifying to know that you were right.”
    “How you conduct your personal business,” Miss Mayhew said stiffly, “is hardly any of my affair, my lord.”
    “It oughtn’t be,” he replied with a grunt. “But I can see that you’ve already formed an opinion about it. Have you an objection to the fact that I divorced my wife, Miss Mayhew?”
    She dropped her gaze.
    “I’d appreciate an answer, Miss Mayhew. In matters such as this—business matters, I mean—I find that honesty among all parties concerned is generally best. And so I repeat my question. Do you disapprove of the fact that I divorced my wife?”
    “There isn’t much about the life men like you lead, Lord Wingate,” she said, to the atlas, “that I find worthy of approval.”
    Burke stared. “Well,” he said, after a moment. “That’s frank, anyway. I can see that whoever’s been prattling to you about me has done a fine job of filling you in on the particulars.”
    She looked up. “Lord Wingate,” she said, and if he hadn’t known better, he might have suspected she was angry. “I told you before, your private life really isn’t any of my business.”
    “Oh, I see. And that’s what you were doing the other night on the street, when you came at me with your umbrella? Minding your own business?”
    Miss Mayhew stuck out her rather sharp little chin. “I thought a young woman was in peril,” she said, and there was a dangerous light in her grey eyes.
    “Oh, of course, of course,” he said. “And you were quite convinced you and your umbrella were going to stop a man three times your size and weight.”
    “I thought I had to try, at least,” she said. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.”
    The reply sent a shiver down Burke’s spine. He told himself that the absurd physical reaction he felt to her words was actually relief, because she was exactly what he’d been looking for all along in a chaperone for Isabel. It certainly wasn’t due to anything else. Certainly not because he thought he’d happened to find—and on his