Which she refused to feel guilty for inflicting. Especially when he was pawing at her most private possessions. She reached for the books he’d gathered before he could read the titles, but she could tell she was far too late for that from the unholy gleam in his eyes. His lips quirked into what was probably the singlemost disconcerting smile she’d ever seen, all blindingly white teeth, sharp incisors, and something almost . . . wild. Definitely uncivilized. He truly looked like the devil. Or perhaps the devil’s creature: vulpine and predatory.
Not attractive at all.
“You’re a Misstopher!” he cried, sounding far too delighted.
“What?” she said flatly, her pulse spiking.
“A Misstopher,” he insisted. She knew very well what a Misstopher was, and she refused to be embarrassed to be called one.
Even though she was. Horribly embarrassed. Judging from the warmth she felt in her cheeks, she was halfway to scarlet by now.
She scrambled to collect the rest of her books before things could get any worse—though she didn’t see how. She didn’t even dare to meet his eye.
He reached behind him and retrieved a rather limp edition of The Italian Poem and attempted to shake off some of the excess mud. A blot of it landed on her cheek. He didn’t appear to notice. Nor did he seem to notice the scowl she settled on him.
“A Misstopher is a young lady obsessed with Christopher Essex,” he persisted, as if she needed the clarification.
“Obsessed?” She jerked the book from his hand and slapped it on the top of her pile. “Who’s obsessed? I’m not obsessed. That’s utterly ridiculous.” She didn’t sound defensive at all.
He arched a skeptical brow as he glanced at the ruined volumes stacked precariously high in her arms.
“And I am not a young lady,” she said as haughtily as she could muster.
“You look young to me,” he countered, eyeing her from top to toe. She flushed even further under the scrutiny. “Seventeen? Eighteen?”
“Impertinent,” she snapped. “I’m seven and twenty.”
His brow furrowed. “You don’t look seven and twenty to me. Although I don’t know what seven and twenty is supposed to look like.”
“It’s supposed to look like me,” she gritted out.
He studied her for a moment longer—it felt like an eternity to her—then finally shook his head and leaned back on his haunches. “No, no, it is impossible you are seven and twenty . . .”
“I know my own age, sirrah!”
“Unless you are a changeling. You have that look about you.”
“Look? What look?”
He narrowed his eyes at her in a contemplative manner. “The look of the fey. All pale and small.” He waved his hand in the general direction of her face. “It’s either that or malnourishment.”
She was very sure her head would explode if he continued talking in such a vexing manner. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. Why is this happening to me?” she muttered, banging her forehead on her pile of Essex.
“Ah, yes, what are you doing on the road in this dreadful weather? My driver almost trampled you, I’ll have you know.”
“I am well aware,” she said, standing up with as much poise as she could while clutching a mountain of books, her boots shackled to the mud. He stood with her and grabbed hold of her arm when she began to list backward. When she glared up at him for the further impertinence, the words froze in her throat, for she had not realized quite how tall he was until now—taller than Arthur or even Inigo. It was an actual strain to her neck to meet his eyes.
And he was standing much too close to her, the collection of Essex the only thing separating their bodies other than the mud.
Before she could gather her careening thoughts and demand her release, he let go of her forearm. But the reprieve was short-lived, as he abruptly wrapped both of his enormous hands around her shoulders. She squeaked in response.
“What are you . . .” she began, sounding breathless and a bit too much like a swooning Misstopher for her taste.
Her protest was cut short by another embarrassing squeak as he lifted her off the ground, her boots making the rudest sound imaginable as they were released from their muddy prison. He carried her out of the ditch by the upper arms as if she weighed nothing, her legs dangling like a rag doll, and deposited her in a relatively mudless patch of grass next to her abandoned portmanteau and disemboweled carpetbag.
The whole ordeal was over before she could decide how she felt about it. On the one hand, she was very glad she was no longer in danger of drowning in mud that was determined to eat her. On the other hand, she was no damsel in distress, and the last thing she wanted was to feel indebted to the viscount.
She wouldn’t have even been in the ditch if not for him.
“I beg your pardon?” he said, looking startled.
She’d said that last bit out loud, hadn’t she? “You heard me. And what do you mean, why am I out here in the rain? You know perfectly well why.”
The viscount’s brow furrowed, as if he were truly perplexed. “You’ve lost me, Miss Johnson.”
“Miss Jones, you . . . you . . .”
“Devil-spawned donkey?” Either he really was a lackwit, or he was toying with her. She had a sinking feeling it was the latter, especially when she noticed the corners of his mouth twitching, as if he were fighting back laughter.
Devil-spawned donkey indeed.
She shoved the stack of books in his arms and unbuckled the straps of her portmanteau. She reached inside the already overstuffed compartment and pulled out her third best dress to make room for the books. She’d only have two gowns left to her name, but this one—a scratchy black crepe disaster left over from when she’d been mourning her father—was ready for the dustbin anyway. She balled it up angrily and tossed it toward the ditch with as much rage behind it as she could muster. Which was quite a lot.
The wind caught it, and it floated gently to the earth about two feet away from where she stood.
She growled in fury, plodded over to the dress, and threw it again.
As if on cue, the wind picked up abruptly and whipped the billowing skirt back in her face and around her neck. She struggled for several fruitless moments before she finally managed to untangle herself from the fabric. She decided to abandon her initial plan, since the wind seemed quite set against her dramatic gesture, and threw the gown straight down at her feet. She stomped on it until it was dead and buried under a layer of fragrant mud. Then she stomped on it some more.
It was surprisingly cathartic.
Chest heaving and temples throbbing with the beginnings of a spectacular headache, she turned back to the viscount, daring him with her eyes to say one more ludicrous thing. Just one thing, and she was more than willing to stomp on him next, his title be damned.
She may have inherited her father’s temper, along with his vocabulary.
The viscount just stared at her with wide eyes and a slack jaw, the stack of books cradled protectively against his breast as if to shield them from her wrath.
“That was . . .” He broke off and swallowed, a strange, feverish flush anointing his cheekbones. “That was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I think you’ll do quite nicely.” Then he broke into another grin—that shining, unnerving baring of his teeth that sent chills down her arms and a fire through her belly.
She glanced away before she went blind from such an unseemly display and stalked back to the portmanteau.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she muttered. She shifted half the books from his arms and began stuffing them inside. They were going to make an absolute mess out of everything else she owned, but she’d just have to sort it out later. Good poetry was far more important than clean stockings.
Murdering her third best dress had taken most of the fight out of her. Her anger over her whole hopeless situation had fizzled away enough to make room for her rising despair. She’d have to make it to the village before the ma
il coach to London came. She couldn’t afford to miss it—could barely afford the fare to London, where she could only hope Inigo would be willing to help her. She hated having to rely on his charity yet again, but she had no other recourse.
His offer of marriage was sounding better by the minute, though she knew she could never go through with it.
“Well, you’re such a small human I just worry if you could hold your own against the little beasts,” the viscount answered as he watched her pack, as if every move she made were absolutely fascinating.
She could feel her self-pity receding in the wake of the viscount’s continued gibberish. She shook her head in disbelief. “Small human?” Who even talked like that?
He nudged her aside with his elbow and stuffed the rest of the books inside the trunk himself. When he straightened to his full, unnerving height again, she wrinkled her nose at the streaks of mud on his shirt and cravat. He didn’t look like he even noticed—not that she expected a man wearing a dressing gown in public to give much of a damn about his toilette.
He was studying her too closely once more, and she wanted to punch him in the nose more than ever for the way those brown eyes made her blush. “You can’t be more than four stone soaking wet. That’s small,” he finally said.
“I weigh more than four stone!” she scoffed.
“In those skirts, perhaps. But out of them, I’m not so sure.”
“I am a lady, sirrah. How dare you speak of me without my skirts.”
“But you said you weren’t,” he countered, looking baffled.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You said you weren’t a lady not ten minutes ago.”
“I said I was not young.”
“Then you’re an old lady?”
“Yes!” she cried. “No! Wait. Oh, God, what is happening right now?”
He looked at her despairingly, as if she were the lackwit. “I am attempting to hire you as my governess. But you won’t allow me to finish a single train of thought,” he replied.
She laughed a bit hysterically. “What?”
“Gov. Er. Ness. For the brats,” he elucidated.
“I must be having a nightmare,” she muttered.
“I almost didn’t stop; you were such a pathetic sight down there in that ditch. I was not convinced from that sorry display that you could handle my girls. It would have been more merciful to leave you behind. The twins can be quite a handful.”
She thought that was a bit of an understatement.
“But you have convinced me,” the viscount continued. “You’re a vicious little thing, aren’t you? I think your claws will be sufficient to keep the brats in line.”
She stared at him for a long, long time as she struggled to come up with words to counter such brazen insolence.
“Do you even realize that you’ve insulted me? And who calls their own children such names?”
“I do. They love it.”
“Demon-spawn? Hellions?”
His brow darkened. “They’re terms of endearment, Miss Smith.”
“Jones! Miss Jones. Miss Minerva Jones, who you just got sacked from her post after falling on her and groping her . . .”
“I was trying to regain my balance,” he interrupted loftily.
“On my breasts?” She cringed at the volume of her voice, especially on that last word. She glanced toward the carriage to find the girls giggling their evil little heads off as they watched her. Even the driver, who had propped himself up against the side of the carriage to shamelessly eavesdrop on the proceedings, smirked at her.
The viscount’s pale cheeks grew rosy, but she doubted it was from embarrassment at her faux pas. He looked more than ever as if he were trying not to laugh at her.
If he did . . . oh, if he did, she would punch him.
“It was dark?” he finally managed to strangle out. He didn’t look contrite at all.
Unbelievable. “I was sacked with no references. The headmistress said I was a threat to the moral sanctity of the entire school. That I must have tempted you to fall through my attic window and onto my bosom.”
He guffawed, unable to restrain himself any longer. She stalked in his direction, hands balled up, ready to deliver her blow. “My father was a navy captain. He taught me how to fisticuff,” she bit out, closing the distance between them.
His eyes widened, and he actually shifted back a step or two. He raised his palms in surrender. “First of all, fisticuff is not a verb. Second of all, if you punched me like that, you’d break your thumb.” Without warning, he took her hand and moved her thumb to the outside.
Damn it, she always got muddled on that point.
And he was still holding her hand. His own was big and warm and surprisingly rough for a pampered aristocrat.
It did not feel nice at all.
She jerked away. “I’m surprised you even know what a verb is,” she muttered.
He scowled at her, as if she’d finally succeeded in ruffling his feathers. But she didn’t feel bad for her scathing tongue. She was a vicious creature, after all.
“I suppose a Misstopher is allowed to feel superior about grammar,” he drawled.
Ouch. He was surprisingly quick for a legendary wastrel. And tenacious.
“I am a grammarian. It is my job.” She tried to end her retort there and then, but she found herself unable to hold her tongue now that the subject of her favorite poet had been broached once more. “And while Christopher Essex is a genius, the likes of which has not graced English letters since the time of the Bard, a grammarian he is not.”
“What?” he strangled out, his expression wounded, though his eyes still danced with something that looked very much like glee.
“His verse plays fast and loose with the English language in ways that would appall Dr. Johnson. It is his greatest talent, as well as his most annoying . . . and why am I talking about this with you?”
“You used fisticuff as a verb,” he said flatly.
“I stand by my use of that word,” she stated haughtily, though she really, really didn’t. It was just that he was so infuriating he seemed to render her incapable of proper speech.
“Miss Smith . . . Smythe?”
“Jones. That wasn’t even close.”
“Will you accept the position or not?”
She snorted. “You have got to be having me on.”
His scowl metamorphosed into a smirk. “Oh, you’d know if I was having you on.”
She was so gobsmacked by his effrontery that it took her a few moments to recover enough to speak. “Was that innuendo? Are you hurling innuendo at me now?” she cried, appalled. “And you want me to be a governess to your children? Tell me, Lord Marlowe, do you treat all females under your employ in such a libidinous manner? We are human beings, sirrah, not your playthings.”
“Tell that to my last mistress. Though I rather think I was her plaything,” he muttered, rubbing his backside for some reason.
She spluttered, unable to find words.
“And I should have known you were a bluestocking,” he continued, immune to the vicious glare she sent his way.
“You make it sound like a bad thing,” she retorted, crossing her arms over her chest in challenge. Perhaps she’d get to punch him after all.
He matched her stance and gave her what very much resembled a pout. “It is, Miss Jones. It means m’sister and the duchess will try to snatch you out from under me for their own brood. And I’ll not have it.”
“What are you even talking about?”
He rolled his eyes impatiently. “Governessing. I’ve been talking to you about governessing for the past four hours . . .”
“Half an hour at most.”
“But you keep interrupting me to talk about dreadfully dull things like grammar and Dr. Johnson and mistresses.”
What? “You’re the one . . .”
“You’d be miserable with m’sister’s bunch. I think there’s eight of ’em now. Or eighteen.” He shuddered. “She
keeps breeding with Brinderley at a revolting rate. And the Duchess of Montford’s sisters are even worse than the twins. I am near convinced that they were the ones to burn down that castle in Yorkshire, not Aunt Anabel’s wig, but Monty refuses to listen.”
He was, in a word, exhausting, and most of what he said made no sense whatsoever. Aunt Anabel’s wig indeed. She had no idea what he was going on about. “Yet didn’t your own daughters burn down Montford’s property?”
He snorted. “Who do you think put them up to it? The Honeywells make excellent ale, but they really do belong in Bedlam.”
Oh, someone belonged in Bedlam, and he was standing in front of her in a red dressing gown.
And she herself would indeed belong in a madhouse to even contemplate accepting the viscount’s offer for one second. She would be insane to agree to play mother hen to the Leighton twins. The destruction they had wrought at Barming in their short tenure had been as impressive as it had been bloodcurdling—though the fräulein had rather deserved her fleecing and the headmistress that drawerful of rats. And that awful cook, who had served the charity girls table scraps and half-rotted meat, really had deserved the load of exploding cow manure in her oven. The whole school had to suffer the smell for a week, but it had been worth it.
But this—this—could never work. While the twins seemed to like her well enough, she doubted their goodwill would last forever. One day she would wake up, bald and naked, in a field full of cows with digestive problems. That wasn’t even touching on the issue of having Lord Marlowe as an employer. He was without a doubt one of the most aggravating human beings she’d ever met.
“You called me a vicious little thing,” she gritted out.
“I’ll double your salary at Barmy.”
She shut her eyes and refused to be swayed by filthy lucre. She was better than that. “You called me a Misstopher!” she hissed.
“A spade is a spade, Miss Jones. I’ll triple it.”
Well, that settled it. A lady had to eat. But she didn’t have to be happy about it. She picked up her portmanteau and stalked toward the carriage as fast as the mud would allow. She didn’t make it two steps, however, before the added weight from her sodden library made her nearly topple straight back into the ditch. Lord Marlowe tugged her upright by the collar of her damp redingote and snatched the portmanteau from her hands. He smirked victoriously at her one final time before bounding off toward the carriage.
Regency Romp 03 - The Alabaster Hip Page 4
