Free Lord Perfect by Loretta Chase Page A

cannot afford .
    "I prefer to carry them now, my lord," she
said. "A footman will be out of place in Bleeding Heart Yard. It
would be best if we went our separate ways."
    * * *
    BENEDICT DID NOT want to go his separate way.
    He wanted to stay where he was, talking to her, looking
at her, listening to her. She had laughed—at what must have
been a comical look of horror on his face when she asked whether his
father understood him.
    The sound of it wasn't what he'd expected. It was low,
deep in her throat.
    Wicked laughter. Bedroom laughter.
    The laughter seemed to hang in the air about him as he
returned to the hackney. It hung there during the short journey home.
It followed him into the house and up to Peregrine's room.
    He found the boy kneeling in the window seat, bent over
a colored plate from Belzoni's book. It illustrated the ceiling of
the pharaoh's tomb, with an assortment of strange figures and symbols
in gold on a black background, possibly a representation of the
nighttime sky and constellations as the ancient Egyptians saw them.
    Benedict refused to puzzle over it. The ancient
Egyptians were too aggravating for words.
    He told the boy what Atherton had decided.
    Peregrine frowned. "I do not understand," he
said. "Father said he was done with sending me away to school.
He said I was welcome to grow up illiterate and ignorant. He said I
did not deserve a gentlemanly education when I could not behave as a
gentleman ought. He said—"
    "Obviously, he has changed his mind," Benedict
said.
    "It is exceedingly inconvenient," Peregrine
said. "I am not done studying Belzoni's collection. In any case,
it makes no sense to leave so soon. The term will have already
started by the time I get to Edinburgh. If one must be a new boy, it
is better to start at least with the other new boys. Now I shall be
the newest new boy, and I shall waste a lot of valuable time fighting
when I might be here, improving my Greek and Latin and organizing my
tables of hieroglyphs."
    Peregrine would not be bullied. He would not be any
boy's lackey. As a consequence of this, and of eternally being the
new boy, he spent a good deal of time making his position clear by
means of his fists.
    "I am aware of this," Benedict said. "The
fact remains, your father commands, and you must obey." He did
not mention the word or two he intended to have with Lord Atherton.
Benedict did not hint at his intention to bring Peregrine straight
back, if it was humanly possible, and hire a proper tutor for him, as
should have been done ages ago.
    He did not want to get his nephew's hopes up. In any
case, a son must obey his father.
    Parents must be treated with respect, whether one
wants to strangle them or not.
    Whatever else Benedict was prepared to do on Peregrine's
behalf, he would not encourage disobedience.
    "I thought he had washed his hands of me and put
you in charge," Peregrine said. "Lord Hargate must think
so, because it was you, not Papa, he told to find me a drawing
master. And what is to become of my drawing, I cannot think. I shall
never get on at this rate. I have only now begun to make progress.
No, it is true," he said when Benedict's eyebrows went up. "Mrs.
Wingate says so, and she does not flatter me, you know. 'Lord Lisle,
you have been drawing with your feet again,' she will say when I have
made a muck of things." He smiled. "She makes me laugh."
    "I understand," Benedict
said. She made him want to laugh. She'd done it at the Egyptian Hall, when she'd quizzed her
daughter about attacking Peregrine. He'd wanted to laugh in front of
Popham's shop—at her blank astonishment when informed that
Peregrine had an ambition—and at her response to this. He'd
wanted to laugh today, when she'd joked about throwing herself at
Benedict.
    She was droll. She said and did things he didn't expect.
    He could still hear her laughter.
    "Well, I suppose there is no help for it,"
Peregrine said. He closed the book. "Still, I have a fortnight.
I shall have to make the