Free Taming Beauty by Lynne Barron

without the two boys and their quarrelsome uncle filling the space.
    “His lordship makes me nervous.”
    “In a good way or a bad way?”
    “Both, I suppose,” Agnes admitted, ducking her head and smiling.
    “I know precisely how you feel.”
    Lilith sank back into her chair before the table littered with the remnants of the best breakfast she had enjoyed in years. Since she was a very small girl and Dunaway had lived mostly at Gwendolyn’s house, traveling from Hanover from Grosvenor Square only to make sporadic attempts to beget an heir.
    “Well, what are you waiting for, woman?”
    Lilith looked up to find Malleville standing in the open doorway glaring at her.
    “Are you speaking to me in that surly tone?”
    “Who else would I be speaking to?”
    “Agnes, have you had the pleasure of meeting Baron Malleville, formerly known to everyone outside the family as Grim?” Lilith asked of the girl slowly backing away toward the kitchen.
    “Good morning, my lord,” Agnes whispered, dropping a quick, clumsy curtsy.
    “Miss Poole.” Malleville gave a sharp nod in acknowledgment. “Let’s go, Lilith.”
    “Where, precisely, do you think I ought to be going with you?” Lilith asked.
    “Church, where else?”
    Agnes looked from Lilith to Malleville and back again, clearly perplexed by their banter masquerading as hostility.
    “It’s quite all right,” Lilith assured the girl. “We’re almost family, brother and sister, even.”
    Malleville grimaced, and Lilith couldn’t help but laugh.
    “Hurry, already,” he ordered, stepping back and holding the door open. “Before we’re late.”
    “You’d best go,” Agnes said earnestly. “The reverend does like to poke fun at stragglers. Not that he’d dare poke fun at his lordship.”
    “But you’ll be free game.”
    “That’s quite all right as I don’t mind a poke now and again, just for fun.” Lilith slowly walked across the public room, all too aware of the man’s gaze on the sway of her hips.
    “Don’t get any ideas,” Malleville said, his voice a delicious low rumble.
    Lilith brushed by him, pausing outside to blink against the bright sunlight.
    “Can you not move any faster?” he all but barked.
    “It is not a question of whether I can but rather whether I will.”
    “And?”
    “I am averse to over-exerting myself in this heat.”
    “I ought to toss you over my shoulder and carry you,” Malleville grumbled.
    “I dare you.”
    “You’d like that wouldn’t you?”
    “I would actually.”
    Two elderly women caught sight of Lilith and Jasper walking along the dirt lane that wound alongside the river and stopped to stare. A bit farther up ahead a gaggle of girls watched their approach from the foot of the bridge, their heads bent close as they whispered and giggled behind their hands.
    “How long have you been in the village?” Malleville asked, nodding to the old ladies as they passed.
    “Oh, perhaps two hours.”
    “Just long enough to hang out the wash,” he muttered.
    “I’ve not waved around so much as a chemise,” she protested with a laugh.
    “Why is it I don’t believe you?”
    “Honestly, I’ve been on my very best behavior.”
    “That’s what has me worried.”
    “Good gracious, what sort of shop is this?” Lilith turned to peer through the window of a narrow shop crammed with all manner of goods and wares. Books and bottles, painted flower pots and porcelain figurines, toys and tin canisters, sacks of flour and jugs of whiskey crowded the shelves lining the walls. Garden rakes, walking sticks, parasols and rifles canoodled in every corner. Shawls and ribbons, wool trousers and bolts of velvet, lengths of watered silk and strings of glass beads hung from the ceiling rafters.
    “Have you never seen a mercantile?” He stopped beside Lilith and though she couldn’t take her eyes from the shop’s shadowy interior, she felt his gaze on her, skating over her profile.
    “Why, a person could buy anything they’ve