The Trouble With Being Wicked Read Online Free Page B

sharply. Did he envy the fictional Captain Inglewood his beautiful, pregnant wife? Long for a lovely young family of his own? A toddler to dawdle on his knee?
    Celeste bit her lip as an aching tenderness spread through her. Oh, goodness. Her greatest weakness was touching men.
    She smiled at her pun. Truly, she must stop thinking like a courtesan. She must learn to be plain Miss Smythe, companion to an officer’s expectant wife whose husband was away at sea. She must not see a prospective lover whenever she looked at a handsome man.
    But as she observed Elizabeth and Lord Trestin, she realized she had become the intruder. Lord Trestin evidently knew the bonds that held a family together. What did she know? That mothers were selfish, fathers indifferent, and siblings a treasure other people were lucky enough to possess.
    Whenever she became overwrought, the fastest way she become un-wrought was to attend to the facts. She spun and marched around the side of the cottage. This was not the time to become melancholy over what might have been.
    A jagged fissure in the cottage’s limestone wall made her leafy adversary easy to pick out of the foliage, a topic she was far more interested in exploring. She placed a hand on the tree’s knotted trunk and addressed Lord Trestin, who’d escorted Elizabeth behind. “This is the tree that must come down.”
    She made the mistake of looking into his face. Her heart performed a somersault in her chest. Now that they’d traded the dark parlor for sunlit shrubbery, she could see the color of his eyes. Not brown, exactly, but golden. With just the barest indication of warmth, they could turn molten—but she did not have to worry herself there. He appeared perfectly calm and unmoved when he said, “I forbid it.”
    She was momentarily struck dumb. He couldn’t forbid it. The property was hers. Nevertheless, she couldn’t discredit the proprietary way he’d spoken. He hadn’t accepted the transaction was complete, as if he didn’t want to give up the cottage just yet.
    Surely he hadn’t meant to sound so abrupt. “It’s the only way to secure the foundation,” she said. “ I’m sure the captain would feel this is a show of good faith on your part, but if you prefer not to have one of your groundskeepers exert himself, I’ll hire a laborer from the village.”
    “ You will?”
    A mistake.She was the companion, not the one to be ordering such things as repairs. “I would hardly ask Mrs. Inglewood to take on the task in her condition. Would you?”
    His gaze flicked to Elizabeth. His censure tempered, for he seemed to consider her something to be handled gently. Celeste could have easily disabused him of that notion, but to what purpose? If he had a fondness for Elizabeth, she ought to leverage it, not quash it. If she was in any way jealous that her friend had drawn his concern—which she was certainly not—there was nothing to it but the collective rivalry that existed among all members of the Muslin Company.
    “Mrs. Inglewood ought to be resting,” he said. When his gaze returned to Celeste, traces of the warmth he’d directed at Elizabeth touched on her. The molten warmth she’d feared would undo her.
    She despised feeling vulnerable. For all of her life, she’d protected her heart from just such a danger as her attraction to him presented now. What men wanted, they took. Then they searched out another conquest, and another, for a woman never stopped giving but a man lost interest easily. There was no permanence. No promise she would receive anything but a few jewels and a bank draft before she was set aside.
    She tore her gaze away and looked down, seeing the rough bark beneath her hand. Besides guarding the only part of herself she’d ever been able to keep private, she must be more careful to behave submissively. As much as she detested comporting herself meekly, she did not want to give him reason to look closer.
    “I wish you would reconsider,” he pressed her.