Free How To Build The Perfect Rake by Kate Harper

an indifferent
poet but she had not realized he would be truly ghastly.
    Somewhere around page five, a reference to
‘and birds and sheep and oxen bow down before her celestial glow’
was almost Olympia’s undoing. Once again, she felt her lips twitch
as an image of a field full of sheep swooning at the sight of the
fair Carisse overtook her. This was not good. She had suffered
through a fit of the giggles on other occasions and knew that they
were harder to banish than hiccups. She felt her shoulders shake
and searched her reticule for her handkerchief, something that
might disguise her predicament. Hopefully her idiot host would
think she was overcome with emotion, as opposed to hysteria.
    ‘Most glorious Carisse, come make your peace
with destiny,
    and take your rightful place among the
heavens…’
    Olympia pressed the handkerchief hard
against her lips and wished that she could take her rightful place
at home, with Aunt Flora. Because eating candied fruits really had
to be so much better than this!
     
    It took some time for Luc to recover from
his astonishment at discovering that his plan had worked
outstandingly well and that he was now firmly ensconced on the
couch next to the much admired Miss Houghton. For a while he just
sat and basked in the knowledge that he was doing a far better job
than he had imagined he was capable of. Olympia had been right;
turning up at this poetry nonsense had been a stroke of genius for
how could Carisse not compare him favorably to their host and the
other rum ‘uns that were scattered around the room. Falstaff fellow
was a complete fool, anybody could see that. That jacket! Luc gave
an inward shudder, wondering why anybody would want to wear
something that would look better on a footstool.
    It took sometime for his inner exultation to
subside enough to realize two things, which rather took the wind
out of his sails. The first was that the pap their idiot host was
reading was execrable in the extreme. And the second was that he
was trapped there listening to it for the foreseeable future. By
the wad of papers in the precious Endymion’s hand, this might go on
until dawn. It was enough to make a man regret that he did not have
a drink and he cursed his lack of foresight for not obtaining one
before sitting down. His head had clearly been in a fog.
    And why wouldn’t it be?
Carisse Houghton looked at you as if you were a person of interest!
A man to be taken seriously. Dear heaven’s, she noticed
you !
    That aspect of the evening was all very
satisfactory. What wasn’t satisfactory was this cursed wordy
nonsense. He wondered what Olympia made of it. Several minutes
later, when he felt her quivering beside him, he knew exactly what
she thought of it and, more importantly, what had set her off. It
had to have been the damn reference to livestock. The girl always
did have an appreciation of the absurd. Luc risked a quick glance
at Carisse, on his other side. She looked perfectly grave and was
paying rather more attention than perhaps such appalling bad poetry
merited but then, she was probably a very polite young woman.
    A reference to geese caused Olympia to give
a small, involuntary peep herself and Luc found that he had a
sudden urge to grin. Damn Ollie! She could always get him to see
the ridiculous side of things and really, things did not get any
more ridiculous than this. He glanced at her and found that her
eyes were downcast, handkerchief firmly pressed against her lips.
What a wretch she was! And how he wanted to laugh at the absurdity
of this ridiculous situation.
    With a Herculean effort, Luc schooled his
face back into the mildly bored look that Howe had urged him to
master. It was a surprisingly easy expression to maintain when one
had the knack of it and it gave him the luxury of a certain amount
of mental privacy. He wondered what course of action to take next.
Howe had warned him not to rush his fences.
    ‘They like to think they have you interested
but you can