Free A Lady’s Lesson in Scandal by Meredith Duran

heard her whisper.
    So, at least the library impressed her. Long and narrow, it lacked windows thanks to some cheap ancestor who’d feared the window tax. Halfway down its length, twin staircases spiraled up either wall to a narrow walk that ran the length of the room and supported additional bookcases. He supposed it
was
impressive.
    “Here’s a lot of books,” she murmured.
    Not as many as there should be. At odd moments, old Rushden’s petty cruelty in selling his wife’s books still astonished Simon. The old bastard had all but given them away simply to make a point—simply to spite the one person who had loved them as much as the countess had.
    “I’ve become something of a collector recently,” Simon said. Each and every of the countess’s volumeswould one day reside on these shelves again, even if it took a lifetime to regather them.
    “You must spend all your time reading,” said the girl.
    He laughed. She cut him a peculiar look. “That’s not quite the point,” he said.
    “They’re books,” she said flatly. “What other point is there?”
    He paused. Actually, it wasn’t a bad question. He might have asked the same, as a boy. He’d lost countless hours to reading, enamored in discovering that the forgotten things—odd, curious facts for which the world no longer had any use—could be wondrous, worthy of attention and care. He’d felt very clever for appreciating them, for pointing out things that even the countess had missed. She’d been generous in her praise.
I never thought of it that way. What a brilliant idea, Simon
.
    Memories of his boyish gratification made him smile now. “I favor the unique,” he said. “Literally. Many of these manuscripts are too rare and delicate to be read.” He deliberately paused. “Although rough handling does have its pleasures.”
    She stared blankly. “So you’re keeping them safe for somebody to ruin later?”
    Had she missed his innuendo, or was she having him on? The latter possibility intrigued him. One didn’t often think of the poor as having a rich inner world, much less a sense of humor. Their sullen eyes and sallow faces seemed to mask only a well-founded resentment and perhaps—if one believed the nervous talk at dinner parties—visions of the slit throats of their betters.
    Come to think of it, humor wasn’t an assetcommonly ascribed to anybody outside the beau monde. Even the middling classes appeared from a distance to be dull and despicably moral.
    He eyed her as she crossed her arms and looked around. A grubby little thing with keen wits and a sharp tongue. Not at all what he’d expect of a slum rat. She was slighter than Kitty, a touch shorter, narrower through the shoulders—the best a body could do when raised on gruel and water, no doubt. But her throat was long, beautifully slim. The square angle of her jaw looked sharp enough to hurt a finger that pressed too recklessly upon it. Perhaps he should test that theory. She was ignoring him with irritating ease, looking up now at the skylights old Rushden had installed, and her expression—
    Her expression stopped his breath. She wore a look of wonder so vivid and alive that he glanced up himself, wanting to see the miracle.
    But there were only the skylights, which remained unremarkable.
    Absurd to feel disappointed.
    He glanced back to her face. Perhaps to her the skylights
were
miraculous. She hailed, no doubt, from one of those dark and crowded devil’s acres where glass was broken and the sky was hemmed by overhanging hovels. This world must seem entirely foreign. Everything clean, shining, immaculate: all of it strange and new, remaining to be discovered by her.
    A curious feeling twisted in his gut. He didn’t quite like it. How absurd that he should be envious, even if only for a moment. Awed by glass and astounded by architecture, she was the simplest explanation of how cathedrals had conned generations into religious sentiments that justified their suffering.