Free How To Vex A Viscount by Mia Marlowe Page A

looked pointedly around the long shed. “I see no one else here, so unless you have a mouse in your pocket, I have to assume you intended for me to hear you.”
    “You might assume so if I’d known you were there.” He’d donned his shirt once again, but hadn’t buttoned it properly. A deep vee of dark skin showed at the base of his throat. Daisy looked away from him. “Honestly, for a large man, you’re quiet as a cat when you wish to be.”
    “Or perhaps you were deeply absorbed by something.” He leaned over her shoulder and looked at the painting of lovers that had so captured her imagination. “Ah! Yes, quite . . . inspirational. I see why you didn’t hear my approach.”
    She pressed her lips together in a tight line. “It’s still very rude to eavesdrop on someone else’s conversation—even if it’s only with themselves.”
    He narrowed his eyes at her. “Someone else said something very like that to me recently.”
    Blanche. Surely he wouldn’t connect the two of them solely on the strength of that one tiny gaffe.
    “Well, whoever it was, milord, they were right.”
    “No doubt she’d agree with you,” he said with a laugh. “Unfortunately, I’m expected for tea with Lady Brumley and her daughter, and I can’t greet them covered in grime, so I need to clean up a bit. I would ask you to join me, but—”
    “I’m not in need of a bath at present,” Daisy said primly. Why did he feel himself at liberty to make such outrageous suggestions to her? At the same time, the thought of Lucian’s warm skin and slithering soap bubbles left her slightly light-headed.
    He snorted. “What a charming imagination you have. I meant join me for tea.”
    “Oh.” Her belly writhed like a bucketful of eels. It was an honest mistake. Hadn’t he . . . She squinted at him. She suspected he wanted to see if he could catch her with his craftily worded non-invitation to tea.
    “No, thank you. There’s too much work to be done here for me to stop for tea and silliness. No need to trouble yourself on my account, milord.” The last thing she needed was to have to watch Lucian dance attendance on Miss Brumley. “Besides, I know both those ladies and they me. If your father should join the party . . .”
    “Our little charade would be at an end, Miss Clavenhook.” Lucian took her hand suddenly, all traces of teasing gone from his expression. “Thank you for understanding.”
    He truly was worried about his father, she realized. Daisy had been quite young when she lost both her parents, but she still had the loving support of her aunt and uncle and her four sisters. And her great-aunt Isabella, of course.
    Lucian had only his father.
    “It’s all right. But you might send out a pot of tea and a biscuit or two,” she said. “We who are about to die of hunger and thirst might salute you, but we won’t be able to continue to work without a little sustenance. And I’d like to keep working here.”
    The teasing grin returned. “Ah, the Clavenhook curiosity. Long may it wave.”

    Some of the images Daisy saw that afternoon explained a number of mysteries; others created even more questions in her mind, but she couldn’t discuss the disturbingly erotic art with Lucian. In fact, she tried mightily not to even think about him while she sorted and arranged and fit pieces together into startling pictures.
    But she did anyway. He rose in her mind’s eye unbidden. It was as if Lucian were still peering over her shoulder.
    Perhaps it was because she was now seeing depictions of the adventures of the flesh she’d only read about in Blanche’s journal. Perhaps it was because the men in the artwork were all blessed with hawkish dark good looks, an echo of Lucian’s Mediterranean heritage. Or perhaps it was the knowledge that she’d be giving him lessons in kissing that evening as Blanche.
    Her insides twisted in confused circles.
    She turned away from the pottery to the stack of wax tablets. Lucian had skimmed over