Free Nicola and the Viscount by Meg Cabot Page B

“I hadn’t the slightest idea what I was going to do. But I knew I couldn’t stay in that phaeton with him a second longer.”
    â€œIt’s dangerous,” the gentleman said, still grinning as Nathaniel took the seat beside Nicola’s, “for young ladies to go driving without an escort. Fortunately Miss Sheridan has her brother here to protect her. And now you, I suppose.”
    Nicola, looking from the gentleman to Eleanor to her brother and then back again, realized that she had stumbled into an outing between Eleanor and one of her suitors. Lady Sheridan, who always did what was proper, had undoubtedly insisted upon Nathaniel going driving with his sister and her newest beau. Certainly Nathaniel wore an air of brotherly concern usually reserved for dances or other such gatherings.
    â€œMiss Sparks,” he said to her with unaccustomed formality. “May I present Sir Hugh Parker? Sir Hugh, my sister’s particular friend, Miss Sparks.”
    Sir Hugh released the reins and turned around to shake Nicola’s hand. She noted with approval that, though blond and with a mustache—so dangerous, if one hadn’t the God’s excellent bone structure to carry it off—he seemed nice enough, being both affable and tall. More important, he dressed neatly, and without affectation. His jabot was spotlessly white, something Nicola always liked to see in a man.
    She wondered how much he had a year, and if Eleanor especially liked him. She couldn’t tell by Eleanor’s behavior, which wasn’t at all what it usually was. Not a giggle escaped her. Eleanor was trying to act like the lady Madame had attempted to train her to be.
    â€œWhat a good thing we happened along,” Eleanor said as Sir Hugh urged his team of grays forward, once Nicola and Nathaniel had settled into their seats. “What, precisely, did your cousin do to insult you, Nicky? He wasn’t bothering you about selling the abbey again, was he?”
    â€œOh, no,” Nicola said. “This time all he wanted was for me to marry him.”
    Eleanor let out a polite scream of disbelief, and Sir Hugh chuckled some more, as if he found Nicola highly amusing. Only Nathaniel took the information calmly, shooting Nicola a penetrating look, and saying, “I take it all the answer the poor fellow received was no.”
    Nicola, starting to feel a bit ashamed over her earlier behavior toward the Milksop, said defensively, “He isn’t a poor fellow at all, Nathaniel Sheridan, and don’t go trying to garner sympathy for him. It wasn’t only that he had the impertinence to ask when, clearly, he’s the last man in the world anyone would want to marry. It was the way he asked.” She was not about to share with another living soul what the Milksop had said about the God—well, possibly she’d share it with Eleanor when they were alone again together, but certainly not now, in front of Nathaniel and Sir Hugh. Instead she said, “Why, all he said was that he was fond of me.”
    Sir Hugh laughed outright at that, while Eleanor quite rightly looked angry on her friend’s behalf. Only Nathaniel, folding his arms across his chest and leaning deep into his corner of the curricle, regarded Nicola with would have to be called skepticism.
    â€œLet me guess,” he said. “You’d have preferred to have heard something more along the lines of ‘Would that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek’?”
    Nicola threw him a narrow-eyed glance, aware he was making light of her predicament…and of her love for beautiful language. Still, she was not about to pick a fight with her rescuers, so her retort was mild compared with how she would have liked to reply.
    â€œA little Shakespeare,” she said primly, “never hurt anybody. But if you think that my cousin Harold could have proposed to me in any manner that might have induced me to