Free In Love With a Wicked Man by Liz Carlyle Page B

shall have both. I find myself in a mood to indulge in all that life has to offer.”
    She laughed and tipped the pot. “How odd,” she said. “Nancy said something a little like that recently.”
    They settled back and sipped tea in companionable silence, Edward relaxing into his armchair and Kate perched on the long sofa she and Nancy had shared mere moments earlier. After a time, he set his cup onto his saucer with a soft click , and looked at her a little mischievously.
    “So, Lady d’Allenay, I gather I have competition for your favors?”
    Kate almost spewed her tea back out. “ What—? ” she said, after forcing it down. “Are you utterly mad?”
    “I’m not perfectly sure,” he said earnestly. “For all we know, I may have just escaped Bedlam and fled for the moors.”
    “Edward, what are you talking about?”
    “Isn’t that what the villain usually does in gothic novels?” He lifted both his harshly angled eyebrows. “Hies off to hide amidst the heather and the bracken until the hounds run him to ground in some miserable, marshy hole?”
    “Oh, heavens! That isn’t what I meant, and you know it.”
    “Ah, you meant the part about the competition?” he said. “I merely ask because, having thus far enjoyed your nearly undivided devotion—well, except for the sheep and the late harvest—I find myself loath to give it up.”
    “How flattering, Edward, when your stay here has been so brief,” said Kate a little tartly. “But by all means, do carry on.”
    He shrugged a little wanly, though Kate had begun to suspect there was nothing wan about the man. “It’s just that Miss Wentworth suggests that you have your eye, perhaps, on another,” he said, his green eyes warming. “I am not perfectly sure, Lady d’Allenay, that you shall have time for anyone else. I begin to fear my recovery may be protracted, and that I may require the whole of your attention.”
    “Well, you certainly have it now,” she said darkly. “Why do you not tell me exactly what it is my sister said to you?”
    “That the two of you were squabbling over a man.”
    “Ah, and so we were.” Kate relaxed back onto the sofa. “But it has nothing to do with me.”
    “It must do,” he pointed out, “or you wouldn’t have been angry.”
    Kate surveyed him warily across the tea table. “My sister has formed something of a mésalliance,” she said. “And it was that which we were quarreling over.”
    “Ah! So you have no interest in the gentleman?”
    “In Richard Burnham?” Kate rolled her eyes. “Goodness, I should hope not.”
    “Ah, Richard!” he echoed. “Such a strong, stalwart name.”
    “Had you been awake Wednesday,” she pointed out, “you’d know Richard is our rector.”
    “Oh, well. He might still be strong and stalwart, mightn’t he?”
    “He had better be, if he means to marry Nancy.”
    “But you said it was a mésalliance,” he pointed out.
    Kate shrugged. “A poor choice of words,” she said. “I’ve the highest regard for Mr. Burnham. But Nancy is, as you may have noticed, the beauty of the family. It was hoped she might make a brilliant match.”
    “Hoped by whom?”
    Kate hesitated, blinking for a moment. “Oh, my aunt Louisa, who is Lady Upshaw,” she finally said. “She and Uncle Upshaw live in London and are very grand. He’s Nancy’s trustee until she comes of age. They wish to bring her out in a high style and marry her off to a duke, I collect.”
    “Ah,” he said quietly. “And what do you want?”
    “I want my sister to be happy,” said Kate.
    He paused a heartbeat. “And that happiness requires the wealth and status such a marriage would bring?”
    Kate gave a sharp sigh. “Actually, I begin to believe that her happiness requires Richard. But I don’t know what’s to be done about it.”
    “Interesting,” he said quietly. “But that was not, actually, what I meant by my original question.”
    “What original question?”
    “What do you want for