Free The Rake Enraptured by Amelia Hart

looked more unlikely with every year that passed. When she was at her most forlorn, she imagined she should have applied herself to the task of marriage and pursued it with no thought of romance or passion. Any husband was better than lonely spinsterhood.
    Today was not so glum. Today she felt certain the world was a kindly place, and she could trust to time to bring her love and a family of her own.
    She ran her fingers through the grass, and smiled a little.
    “ I see your charges are missing. Safely in bed, I take it?”
    Her head wilted on her neck, so her face came to rest on her raised knees, and for a moment she hid there as if she could pretend to be still alone. Then she took a deep breath for courage, and sat up straight. She did not turn to him for an other breath, trying to decide how to be with him. Harsh? Angry? Still, she could not summon the ardor to joust. The evening was to still, too peaceful and beautiful for quarreling.
    “ Mr Holbrook,” she sighed in quiet acknowledgment.
    “ Miss Preston. Has your day been pleasant?” He paused and waited for her answer as if he were truly interested.
    “ Excellent.” She stared up at him, the perfection of his face, moulded over strong bones, gilded by the last light of the late afternoon sun, unreal almost, save for the two scars beneath his jawline, that from this angle she saw for the first time. So beautiful an outside, it was difficult to remember he was so flawed within. One wanted to believe there was a purpose to such beauty. A reason for it; that it was a physical embodiment of a goodness that dwelt within.
    Even as she acknowledged her own fallibility she could not help smiling at him, bemused by that face. Heavens, but he was attractive.
    His eyebrows went up and his own expression lightened. “You seem happy.”
    “ It’s easy to be, in such surroundings.”
    “ I can see why you’ve escaped here. I imagine the house is more raucous than you’re accustomed to.” He gestured towards the hidden house. “Congenial as the company is, conversation can pall after awhile.”
    “ Yes,” she said with heavy significance, and he chuckled.
    “ You poor creature. Especially for you, with children all day and then we annoying lot at night. I can’t imagine anything more exhausting.”
    “ The children are not so terrible,” she said. “And they were attentive today, for a miracle. I think they find these hot days trying. A classroom is hardly a pleasant place to be.”
    “ No. And I doubt they appreciate the boon of your own unwavering attention.” He looked down into her raised face, and she read approval in his expression. She lowered her eyelashes, and stared at the lake, her heart leaping inside her.
    “ Of course not,” she said, a touch of derision turning the subtle compliment into a joke. “I’d be astonished if it were otherwise.”
    “ None of them are natural scholars?”
    “ Oh no. Well, Sophie might be if she thought there was any profit to it. But she’s been taught there’s nothing more important than pretty dresses and hats and ribbons, and I can’t get her to change her mind. Amy is far gone down that path, dreaming only of a husband, and thinks learning is pointless. Elizabeth is only five. And Albert believes there’s nothing I can teach him that the schoolmasters at Eton won’t know a hundred times as much about. He is tired of nannies and governesses, he tells me. Enough of the company of women.” She repeated the words lightly, though she had not been pleased to have him say it to her face.
    “ Foolish boy,” said Mr Holbrook sardonically, and sat. “When he has been at that school a week or two, I think he will regret what he has lost.”
    “ How so?”
    “ It is not a gentle place.” He was barely two feet from her, and she fought the urge to draw her skirts in close around her legs as if it would increase the distance, suddenly self-conscious again. “Still, it’s a system that won’t change so long