Free Not Quite a Lady by Loretta Chase

he said.
    “Yes,” she said. “I know it is abnormal. I am supposed to hate her.”
    “It’s certainly unusual,” he said. “Females can be more viciously territorial than males.”
    “Can we, indeed?” She looked at him, and he had the distinct sensation of being assessed or tested in some way. “Have you made a study of women, then, too, Mr. Carsington? I’m surprised I haven’t heard of it. Papa quotes you all the time. I envisioned you as a sage.” She looked away, her brow knit. “I saw you with sparse, white hair and a stoop. And spectacles. People must be shocked the first time they come to hear you lecture.”
    Oh, she was good. She’d turned the conversation smoothly from herself to him.
    She ought to know how to do it, at her great age!
    And he ought to know how to press on, at his age. “I have not yet lectured on familial relationships,” he said. “I have studied them, however.” In self-defense, he could have added. “Your case is most intriguing. You had already emerged from childhood when your father remarried. You had to give way to a woman merely nine years older than yourself. This same woman has borne your father four sons so far, the eldest of whom will inherit the title and property. Yet you seem neither jealous nor resentful.”
    “It is like having an older sister,” Lady Charlotte said.
    “One might resent or be jealous of a sibling,” he said.
    “One might,” she said. “You speak from experience, I daresay, having four older brothers.”
    Damnation. She was too good.
    “I don’t have to live with them,” he said. “Boys are usually sent away to school. We don’t have to live under the same roof for years on end. Women do. They are usually eager to have homes of their own.”
    “This is my home,” she said.
    She took some sketches out of a portfolio, clearly wishing to put an end to the subject.
    Perhaps he had become too personal. He was not used to conversing with Society maidens—but it was maddening not to know why she was a maiden still.
    Though Mrs. Steepleton had talked endlessly, she’d added only one more rumor to those surrounding Lady Charlotte.
    This one concerned a mysterious illness in her youth: For a time it was believed that Lady Charlotte would soon follow her mother to the grave. However, after her stepmother took her for an extended stay in the north, then another in the Swiss Alps, she’d recovered from the ailment and made her debut belatedly, at the age of twenty.
    The illness, Mrs. Steepleton whispered, was the reason Lord Lithby allowed her more freedom than some people thought proper.
    Not much of an explanation. A debut at age twenty still left Lady Charlotte eight Seasons to get a husband.
    Darius would find out the answer, eventually. He always found out the answer.
    “Not all of the changes Stepmama made are merely aesthetic,” she said. “It was more than decorating. She made important repairs and improvements.”
    He drew closer to her and tried to fix his full attention on the sketches.
    “New floorboards for certain rooms,” she said. “New airholes cut for ventilation…”
    She went on about chimney pots, windows, and tiled floors, about water closets and washstands and calling bells, about painting and plastering and carpentry.
    He was soon left in no doubt that bringing Beechwood House into order would cost a king’s ransom. Simply maintaining it at a minimum level would be costly. He couldn’t afford it.
    He didn’t want to think about money.
    He didn’t want to think about pipes and drawer pulls and stove bottoms.
    He couldn’t, even if he wanted to. He’d come too close, and he’d caught her scent. She spoke of ventilation, and he was aware mainly of the light scent of flowers or herbs wafting about her—the soap she used or the herbs stored with her clothes. He bent his head and drank it in.
    The soft skin of her neck was inches away from his mouth.
    You are three and a half inches from serious trouble, said