Free Scandal of the Year by Laura Lee Guhrke

not?”
    Her expression darkened a little and she looked away. “So it does,” she murmured. “And I’m about to pay the piper, I’m afraid. But,” she added, looking at him again, her face lighting with a dazzling, unexpected smile that made him think of the sun shining out between storm clouds, “we’re not talking about me and my beastly past. We’re talking about you and your desire to rebel against authority.”
    That mention of her past made him curious, but he was reluctant to pry, and besides, he felt compelled to protest her words about him. “I don’t wish to rebel.”
    “You already did. And probably had a hell of a good time in the process, even if you can’t remember most of it. Why not just admit you wanted to do it?” She shook her head. “No wonder you’re wound so tight, if you can’t even admit you wanted to carouse and have a bit of fun. And why shouldn’t you? You’re young, you’re handsome, you’re obviously wealthy, if your clothes are anything to go by. Why not enjoy yourself?”
    He thought of his father, who’d done enough carousing for both of them. The late duke had caused both his wife and son a great deal of pain in the process, and the last thing Aidan wanted to do was be like that.
    “If you went on a tear more often,” she added, “you’d be less of a prig. Happier, too.”
    He frowned, not liking this assessment of his character at all. “You offer your advice to strangers very freely, miss.”
    “You think it’s cheek? It is, rather, but if you knew me better, you wouldn’t be surprised.” She looked at him with an expression of mock apology, but there was an unmistakable glint of mischief in her violet-blue eyes. “I’m very cheeky. My greatest flaw, I fear.”
    “That,” he countered with a nod to the paper in her hand, “or procrastination, perhaps.”
    “Now you’re teasing! But I can’t contradict you, for I do procrastinate, which is why I’m in the suds today. I fear I shall truly embarrass myself in front of my fiancé, and his mother, too. She wrote the skit, and if I bungle it, I shall fall even more in her estimation, though I’m not sure that’s possible.”
    “You are engaged to be married?”
    She wrinkled her pert nose at him. “Your surprise is hardly flattering, sir.”
    He wasn’t surprised by her engagement, but by his own disappointment at the news of it, a disappointment that was all out of proportion to the situation. He didn’t even know this girl, and from what he could discern so far, she was not his sort at all. In fact, he’d never met anyone quite like her. Being disappointed made no sense, and he tried to dismiss it. “My congratulations,” he said instead.
    “Don’t congratulate me yet.” She gave him a wink. “If I do make an utter fool of myself this afternoon, my fiancé might jilt me at the altar.”
    The careless, offhand way she spoke of a circumstance most people would deem calamitous seemed quite odd to him, but it would be rude to inquire about such an intimate topic. “I should be on my way,” he said instead, “so you can be alone to study your part.”
    “Perhaps it would be better if you stayed.”
    Against his will, his gaze slid down over her knees and along her bare shins to her toes idly skimming circles on the water. “I don’t think so.”
    “You could read the lines with me, which would help me enormously.”
    He set his jaw. “It wouldn’t be proper. There’s no chaperone.”
    “Well, it isn’t as if we’d be doing anything naughty! And I fear you’re too much of a gentleman to even attempt to take advantage of me. Rather a pity, that,” she added with a glance over him. “You’re terribly good-looking.”
    He realized, much to his chagrin, that he was blushing. Not because of the compliment, but because images of “being naughty” with her were going through his mind.
    She perceived his embarrassment, though he hoped not the reason for it. “La, la,” she said,