Free A Lady’s Lesson in Scandal by Meredith Duran Page A

Shewas a naif whose requirements for awe were pitifully low.
    He cleared his throat. “Just glass,” he said. But he could not remove his eyes from her. Strangest thought: he wanted her to look at
him
with that brightness on her face. If he could not feel it himself, then he wanted to stare into it for a while, until it ceased to hurt him.
    Her chin came down. She gave a pull of her mouth as though to mock herself, but he caught the lingering effect of her amazement in the smile that she could not bite back. “I’ve never seen such a thing,” she said.
    For the space of those six words, she sounded almost well spoken.
    This was the second time she’d given him that impression. He considered her narrowly, wondering if she didn’t remember more of the Queen’s English than she let on.
    “This whole place is so …” She turned full circle, her bony hands clenching in her shirt. Her fingers were a sallow, sickly shade, her knuckles white, as if she didn’t have enough blood to fill her body. “It’s beautiful,” she said—roughly, quickly, as if the idea embarrassed her.
    Which seemed peculiar in itself. To call the room beautiful was only to observe a fact. A great deal of money had been spent in making it so The fine oak paneling on the walls, the carved bookcases, the carpets of French tapestry, the porcelain and objets d’art scattered on the low tables, had been acquired (and, alas, entailed) at great expense by his various predecessors. He knew this for a certainty, since he’d spent the last few days negotiating with an underground antique dealer about how much these items might fetch were they suddenly “lost” into that man’s possession.
    He supposed there was no need to lose them now. The thought was bracing. Best get on with it. “As to the letters—”
    “Where is that?”
    “Pardon?” He followed her look toward a painting hanging over the door.
That
was the most irritatingly expensive estate with which he’d been saddled. Crumbling old pile, prison of his miserable youth. Somebody should have had the bollocks to knock it down a century ago, long before this whole entail nonsense began—
    “Is it real?” she asked.
    Puzzled, he turned back to her. “Yes. Paton Park.”
    “Where is it?”
    “Some godforsaken pocket of Hertfordshire. Why do you ask?”
    She visibly hesitated. “It’s …”
    He waited a moment longer, but she shrugged and seemed to lose interest. Looking down to her feet, she gave the floor a little kick. “Here’s some fancy.”
    The exposed patch of floor was covered in painted tile—Spanish, from the looks of it. Was she going to remark on every feature of the room? “Yes, very nice.”
    She smiled faintly. “Nice enough to serve, I reckon.”
    Did a note of dryness infect the lady’s voice? He gave her a smile in return, a fine, rueful blend of self-deprecation and deliberate charm. It would go easier for them both if she took a liking to him. “I confess, I normally reserve my attention for the books, not the room in which they’re housed.”
    She ran an eye down the bookcases. “You must have a lot of attention, then.”
    The reply that leapt to mind gave him pause: it waswholly sexual and thoroughly inappropriate. Nearly he laughed. She was a ragamuffin with holes in her sleeves. Putting his body to hers would be as hygienic as bathing in a wallow.
    Perhaps that was part of her charm, though. A taste of primitive perversions.
    The other part, naturally, would be the sweet, dark justice of defiling his predecessor’s daughter.
    The notion filled him with a warm glow that did not bode well for his chances in the afterlife.
    She backed up and dropped into an upholstered reading chair. He felt his brow climb. The violence of her movement and the violent effect it wreaked on her anatomy left no doubt that she was not wearing a corset.
    Oh, good God
. She wore lad’s breeches; she smelled like tobacco and fish and onions. Of course she wasn’t wearing a