Free How to Live Indecently by Bronwyn Scott Page A

“A gentleman would never put it so bluntly. However, I’d bet five quid you don’t have a headache.”
    She huffed a bit and tossed her pale gold hair, her dark blue eyes flashing with indignation over having been found out. “All right, I’m hiding.” Her confession pleased him. She’d decided to trust him, at least a little. Jamie considered that progress.
    “Isn’t it a little early for that? The dancing hasn’t even started.” He looked past her to see if a hulking brute of a suitor had followed her out.
    She shot a pointed glance at the flute in his hand. “Isn’t it a little early for that? ”
    “It’s never too early for champagne, especially when it’s Veuve Clicquot.” Jamie offered her the glass. “I haven’t touched it. It’s still cold even, and I think you need it more than I do.”
    She smiled and sipped, her eyes holding his over the rim of the flute. Jamie thought the sacrifice well worth it, watching the gold liquid slide past pink lips and down the slender column of her throat.
    “I’m hiding from my mother if you must know,” she said without provocation, resting the flute on the balustrade.
    “Then we have something in common. I’m hiding from mine too.”
    She smiled again, relaxing. She took another swallow of champagne. “Really? Mine wants me to meet a gentleman. I’m supposed to impress him and make a good match, thus saving the family coffers from eventual but certain poverty.” She fixed her indigo stare on him and turned serious, her fingers idly twisting the stem of the flute. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I don’t even know you.”
    “Perhaps that’s the best reason of all,” Jamie offered in low tones, sensing the desperation that welled deep in her no matter how hard she tried to hide it. It was a desperation not unlike the one that had driven him to the veranda. She was close enough now that he could smell the light jasmine scent of her, soft and yet evocative. It suited her. She might look like an angel, but she was not a complacent one. He’d seen the indignant fire in her eyes when he’d called her out.
    “You don’t want to meet the gentleman?” Jamie probed. In his experience women were usually quite eager to meet marriageable men. “Is he ugly? Does he have dissipated habits or a hundred children he wants you to raise?”
    She laughed at his hyperbole and shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t even know his name or what he looks like. Isn’t that terrible? I don’t want to be bartered away even if it means saving my family. Not yet at least. I’d like to live a little, have an adventure all my own without worrying about what to say, what to do, what to wear or who to meet.”
    Jamie’s pulse quickened. It was indeed a desperation like his own, one driven by more than the singular incident of meeting this gentleman or that young lady. It was a hunger for liberty, for the freedom to throw off the shackles of family and responsibility.
    She gave a small, self-deprecating laugh. “I’m a very bad daughter, I’m afraid. The truth is, I’d rather be anywhere but here, regardless of the cost, I think.”
    His sentiments exactly . Jamie shot a glance over the gardens, a mad scheme taking shape in his mind. London lay beyond the fence, beyond the lanterns. He looked his angel in the eye. “Then let’s be there.” With four words he laid down his temptation, testing the conviction of both their thoughts. He was tired of merely thinking he could leave the veranda. Tonight, he would leave the veranda and she could come with him, if she dared. He wagered she would.
    “What? Where?” Her brow puckered into the tiniest of furrows.
    “Anywhere. Let’s be there .” Now that he’d committed to it, he was anxious to be off; down the veranda, over the garden, out the gate. His family would have a collective apoplexy. What he proposed was nearly unthinkable even to him. But not nearly as unthinkable as staying.
    “You’re mad!” But