Then she looked up at him with a gaze that said one thing: You’d best not expect me to clean that up.
Clifton could only gape at her. He’d never met such a woman.
Well, not outside of a public house.
Bossy termagant of a chit, still he couldn’t stop watching her, for there was a spark to this Lucy that dared to settle inside his chest.
She was, with that hair and flashing eyes, a pretty sort of thing in an odd way. But she held herself so that a man would have to have a devilish bit of nerve to tell her so.
Then she shocked him, or at least, he thought it was the most shocking thing he’d ever heard.
“Papa, I haven’t all day and I’ve a roast to see to, as well as the pudding to mix.”
Papa? Clifton’s mouth fell open. This bossy chit was Ellyson’s daughter?
No, in the world of the Ellysons, Clifton quickly discovered, such a notion wasn’t shocking in the least.
Not when weighed against what her father said in reply. “Yes, yes, of course. But before you see to dinner, I have it in mind for you to become Lord Clifton’s new mistress. What say you, Goosie?” he asked his daughter as casually as one might inquire if the pudding was going to include extra plums. “How would you like to fall in love with an earl?”
Lucy glanced over her shoulder and looked at the man standing beside the door. Very quickly, she pressed her lips together to keep from bursting out with laughter at the sight of the complete and utter shock dressing the poor earl’s features. He had to be the earl, for the other man hadn’t the look of a man possessing a title and fortune.
Oh, heavens! He thinks Papa is serious. And in a panic over how to refuse him.
Not that a very feminine part of her felt a large stab of pique.
Well, you could do worse, she’d have told him, if the other man in the room, the one by the window, the earl’s brother from the looks of him, hadn’t said, “Good God, Gilby! Close your mouth. You look like a mackerel.”
The fellow then doubled over with laughter. “’Sides I doubt Ellyson is serious.”
Lucy didn’t reply, nor did her father, but that was to be expected, for Papa was already onto the next step of his plans for the earl and his natural brother, and therefore saw no polite need to reply.
“Sir, I can hardly…I mean as a gentleman…” the earl began.
Lucy turned toward him, one brow cocked and her hands back on her hips. It was the stance she took when the butcher tried to sell her less than fresh mutton.
The butcher was a devilish cheat, so it made ruffling this gentleman’s fine and honorable notions akin to child’s play.
Clifton swallowed and took a step back, which brought him right up against the wall.
Literally and figuratively.
“What I mean to say is that while Miss Ellyson is…is…that is to say I am…” He closed his eyes and shuddered.
Actually shuddered.
Well, a lady could only take so much.
Lucy sauntered past him, flicked a piece of lint off the shoulder of his otherwise meticulous jacket, and tossed a smile up at him. “Don’t worry, Gilby,” she purred, using the familiar name his brother had called him. “You don’t have to bed me.” She took another long glance at him—from his dark hair, the chiseled set of his aristocratic jaw, the breadth of his shoulders, the long lines of his legs, to his perfectly polished boots—everything that was wealthy, noble, and elegant, then continued toward her father’s desk, tossing one more glance over her shoulder. “For truly, you aren’t my type.”
Which was quite true. Well, there was no arguing that the Earl of Clifon was one of the most handsome men who’d ever walked into her father’s house seeking his training to take on secretive “work” for the King, but Lucy also found his lofty stance and rigid features troubling.
He’ll not do, Papa, she wanted to say. For she considered herself an excellent judge of character. And this Clifton would have to set himself down a notch or two if he was going to stay alive, at the very least, let alone complete the tasks he would be sent to do.
No, he is too utterly English. Too proud. Too…too…noble.
And Lucy knew this all too well. For she’d spent a good part of her life watching the agents come and go from her father’s house. She knew them all.
And she also knew the very real truth about their situation: They may never come back. As much as she found it amusing to give this stuffy earl a bit of a tease, there was a niggle of worry that ran down her spine.
What if he doesn’t come back?