Free No Proper Lady by Isabel Cooper Page A

servants were clearing the table, Joan stood looking out the window. The parlor had a good view at times, but the day was bleak. The sunset was lost behind the clouds, and Simon doubted Joan had any desire for natural beauty just then. As the door closed behind the last of the footmen, he stepped forward, close enough to speak but no farther. Alarming her would probably be unwise.
    “I’m a dead shot with any weapon I can name,” Joan said. “I can survive for ten days in the wilderness. I’ve killed things that would make you run away screaming. I’ve led men on missions where we knew we all could die, and I’ve brought most of them back whole. And I’ve been through rituals. Never put a foot wrong either.”
    “I—” he began, and didn’t know how to go on.
    “I get that I have to do this. I’ll learn. But everything I just talked about had a point. That?” One hand gestured to the now-empty table. “That’s about showing that you’re fragile. There is no point, and it’s stupid. Just so you know.”
    “It does serve a point, I think,” he said, and then laughed, careful not to seem like he was laughing at her. “But I couldn’t explain it. I’m afraid I’m not a very good teacher.”
    “You didn’t make your world. You didn’t set its rules.” She sighed then, as if letting a great weight go, and turned to face him. “And don’t worry. You always want to punch your instructor. It passes. You’re a damn sight nicer than most of mine were.”
    “Really?”
    Now she laughed. “I was a soldier, remember? I was thirteen when I started training, and I don’t think the corporal who had charge of us ever used anyone’s name—waste of time with perfectly good words like ‘maggot’ and ‘dipshit’ around. You haven’t left a tenth of the bruises he did either.”
    “Lord,” said Simon. “I’d bloody well hope not!”
    “Oh, he wasn’t a bad guy. Had to toughen us up, you know? And he knew most of us did better when we had someone to hate.”
    “Did you hate him?”
    “For a while. Then we went out in the field. Those of us who came back learned to like him after that.”
    “I hope it doesn’t take such drastic circumstances this time,” he said, half joking.
    Joan stepped forward and put a hand on his arm. Her palm was warm and firm, and her hair smelled like roses now. “I don’t hate you,” she said. “I’m not good at this, and all my other training happened when I was a kid, around other kids who were as bad or worse, and I hate that. It’s not your fault, though, and I’m not thirteen anymore. I might get pissed off, but I’m not going to hate you.”
    “I’m glad to hear it.”
    “Hey,” she said, with a shrug and a resigned smile, “I signed on for this. You didn’t. I’m a bitch sometimes, but I can remember that much.”
    “You’re not—” he responded automatically, and she waved the protest away, shaking her head.
    Her hair shifted a little, a curl falling against her neck. What would it be like, he wondered, to run his hands through that hair now? What would her skin feel like under his hands?
    “I should get back to my research,” he said, hoping his voice wasn’t hoarse. Clearly he’d been in the country too long.

Chapter 10
    “We won’t have to lace it very tightly at all, miss,” Rose said cheerfully. “It being an informal occasion, and you still so thin and all.”
    “Wonderful,” said Joan, looking down at the corset and trying not to sound too sarcastic. Her stomach couldn’t expand, so she was breathing from her chest and feeling like a panting dog, and the whalebones managed to prod her in the side and the breasts at the same time. If this was loose, they’d lace the damn thing tightly when she was dead. “Does it always take this long to put on?”
    “Not at all, miss. Won’t take hardly any time in the future, now that it’s properly laced.”
    Hardly any time , Joan had learned over the past two weeks, meant about half an