Free Compromising Miss Tisdale by Jessica Jefferson Page B

migrem coming on.
    He met her smile with a rather charming one of his own. “You make it sound as if I’ve committed some sort of crime. Pray tell—is it such a bad thing to be the Earl of Bristol?”
    Tamsin laughed, boldly. “Oh, I don’t think so! I would think it is quite a good thing to be as frequently talked about as yourself.”
    “So, I’m the topic of much discussion?” he asked in a voice smoother than pebbles at the bottom of the Thames.
    Ambrosia found herself turning liquid listening to the soft tenor of his voice. It was far more seductive than it should have been, but naturally a man like him knew how to use his appeal to get answers from women.
    “Oh, you’re positively infamous! The broadsheets are practically obsessed with you, especially with your parents being who they were. But if we’re speaking freely, I’m sorry to say that you’re not at all as I had anticipated. I had rather expected to see you sporting a pair of pointy ears with a matching tail. Imagine my disappointment to find you are no satyr, but merely a man.”
    Ambrosia had heard enough. “Tamsin, dear, please ring for tea so that we might entertain our guest a bit more suitably .”
    “Perhaps some brandy as well?” the Earl requested, settling back in the chair and making himself more comfortable.
    “You’ll take tea,” Ambrosia corrected. “We don’t serve spirits during the day.”
    “Very well,” he replied through his smile. It was a polite sort of expression, not one of those more purposeful looks that he so often brandished with the obvious intent to inspire insipidity amongst young women.
    “After our conversation the other day in the park, I wasn’t quite certain as to an appropriate hour to call on you. I do hope I did not catch you at a bad time,” the Earl dusted off the side of his weathered hessians. His boots had seen better days.
    Ambrosia raised an eyebrow. “I do not believe we discussed a specific time, or you calling on me at all, for that matter. If we had, I would have informed you that on Tuesday afternoons we embroider.”
    “She embroiders, I suffer,” Tamsin chirped up.
    He laughed. His was a great, unadulterated laugh that came from his stomach and put to shame any of the polite, inauthentic snickers she heard from most other gentlemen.
    “How old are you, Miss Tamsin?” he asked.
    “Ten and seven, nearly ten and eight.”
    “Do promise to keep me in mind when you make your debut,” he practically purred.
    Ambrosia tsk’d and rebuked him with a glance. “Please, don’t encourage her.”
    Tamsin smiled again, obviously relishing the innocent flirtation. “Oh, I most certainly will not.”
    Ambrosia glared at her younger sister in hopes to inspire some amount of intimidation.
    “Make my debut, that is,” Tamsin clarified, unaffected by the threat. “I’ve always hated all the female idiocy here in Town. The balls, the gowns, the ridiculous men. I want nothing more than to escape to the country so that I may live out my days riding my horses. I simply refuse to be sent to market and be married off like some heifer at the fair. Even if the gentleman in question were to have good breeding and an old title. Present company excluded, of course.”
    “Of course,” he waved it off with a hand. “I don’t take offense easily. After all, my breeding is debatable and my title not terribly ancient. However, I do find it extraordinary that someone as lovely as yourself doesn’t have aspirations of marriage.”
    “Really, I must insist you stop supporting this farce.” Ambrosia accepted the tea tray from a footman and began pouring. “Tamsin will marry when it is her time, as expected of her .”
    Tamsin snorted in response. “It’s not that extraordinary. In fact, my mama claims that my aversion to matrimony might just be hereditary.”
    “It couldn’t be hereditary. After all, isn’t one of your sisters already married?” Duncan said, a taunting smile playing at the corner