Free Nicola and the Viscount by Meg Cabot

he’d have killed any such feeling right there. As a suitor, poor Harold was woefully inadequate. Where were the protestations of undying love, the flowers, the compliments? Why, he had not said so much that he thought her pretty!
    Good Lord . He really was such a milksop.
    â€œAnd Nicola, if you’re thinking of saying no, I suggest you think again. You are going to have to face facts,” the Milksop went on. “With an income as small as yours, you really aren’t likely to receive any better offers.”
    Nicola thought fleetingly of the God, and the way he’d flung his arm around her that day on the Catch Me Who Can . She thought of the number of times he’d asked her to dance, and how very well he’d looked each time, how manly and neat in his well-cut coats of muted colors. She recalled how he wasn’t afraid to swim. After all, he’d been on his college’s rowing team. Punts tipped, did they not? Oarsmen, therefore, of necessity learned to swim.
    â€œI have two thousand a year from my mother,” the Milksop informed her matter-off-actly. “And one day, of course, I’ll be a baron. I don’t think a girl in your position can expect a better offer. It really would behoove you, Nicky, to give my proposal serious consideration. There aren’t many men, I assure you, who’d be willing to take on a girl who not only hasn’t a cent to her name, but is as…well… headstrong as you. Most men don’t like a woman who does things like…well, ride behind steam engines in a public square.”
    The Milksop was making it more and more difficult for Nicola to feel sorry for him. Soon, in fact, she’d positively hate him.
    â€œNot all men would dislike it,” she couldn’t help pointing out with some venom. “Lord Sebastian, for instance.”
    No sooner were the words out of Nicola’s mouth than she wished them unsaid. But there was, of course, no help for it. The Milksop heard, and was immediately struck by not so much what she’d said, but the way she’d said it, if the startled glance he threw her was any indication.
    â€œLord Sebastian?” he echoed. “You mean the viscount?”
    Nicola gave a brief nod—there was nothing, she supposed, that she could do about it now. She only prayed Harold would not figure out the worst of it…her true feelings for the God.
    Suddenly it was Harold’s turn to laugh. Really. He did so, heartily and much to the apparent shock of the horses, who had clearly never heard their owner make such a noise before, as they’d turned back their ears and were rolling their eyes around in confusion.
    â€œLord Sebastian!” the Milksop cried. “Oh, Nicola! You can’t seriously think for a moment that the viscount has the slightest interest in you. Not honestly .”
    Now Nicola felt even angrier than she had over his remarks concerning her behavior in Euston Square. A surge of rage went through her that was quite as strong as the one she’d experienced the time he tried to prevent her going swimming. Only this time, unfortunately, she could not box his ears, because they were in public, and she was, thanks to a decade of Madame Vieuxvincent’s tireless teachings, a lady.
    â€œFor your information,” Nicola, perhaps unwisely, but nevertheless quite coldly, said, “the viscount and I are close friends. Very close friends.”
    â€œYes,” the Milksop said, sounding less and less, each time he spoke, like the Milksop, and more and more like a stranger, someone she had never met before, let alone was related to. “I saw how close you two have grown that day at Euston Square.”
    Nicola, in spite of herself, blushed. She knew she ought not to have allowed the viscount to keep his arm around her the way she had. But he’d done it only out of a desire to protect her, that was all. Fighting her embarrassment, she said stubbornly,