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Elizabeth stamped the mud from her feet on the outer steps to Danbury House, then let herself in the front door and scurried down the hall to the library. Lady D was still at breakfast, this area of the house was quiet, and that blasted little book was waiting.…
She kept her feet on the elegant runner carpet that extended much of the length of the hall. Something about the silence struck her as sacred—of course that may have had something to do with the endless bickering she suffered through during breakfast when Lucas and Jane had fought over whose turn it was to clean up. The second her feet touched the floor, there was a horrible clatter, echoing through the hall, and jangling her already frayed nerves.
She dashed into the library, inhaling the scent of the polished wood and old books. How she savored these brief moments of privacy. With a careful and quiet motion, she shut the door behind her and scanned the shelves. There it was, sitting sideways on the shelf where she’d found it days earlier.
Just one peek couldn’t hurt. She knew it was a silly book, and that most of it was stuff and nonsense, but if she could find just one little scrap of advice that would help with her current dilemma…
She picked up the book and leafed through it, her fingers nimbly flipping the pages as she skimmed Mrs. Seeton’s words. She bypassed the bit about wardrobes, and the nonsense about practicing. Maybe there was something toward the end—
“What are you doing?”
She looked up, painfully aware that her expression was one of a deer staring down the barrel of a hunter’s rifle. “Nothing?”
James strode across the room, his long legs carrying him to intimidating closeness in only five steps. “You’re reading that book again, aren’t you?”
“Not reading, precisely,” Elizabeth stammered. She was a complete ninny to be so embarrassed, but she couldn’t help feeling like she had just been caught doing something most unsavory. “It was more of a browse.”
“I find myself remarkably uninterested in the difference between the two.”
Elizabeth quickly decided that the best course of action was a change of subject. “How did you know I was here?”
“I heard your footsteps. Next time, if you want to engage in acts of subterfuge, walk on the carpet.”
“I did! But the carpet ends, you know. One has to step on the floor for a few paces to enter the library.”
His brown eyes took on a strange, almost academic light, as he said, “There are ways to muffle—Oh, never mind. That is not the matter at hand.” He reached out and snatched HOW TO MARRY A MARQUIS away from her. “I thought we had agreed that this was nothing but nonsense. A collection of drivel and claptrap designed to turn women into brainless, sniveling idiots.”
“I was under the impression that men already thought we were brainless, sniveling idiots.”
“Most are,” he grunted in agreement. “But you don’t have to be.”
“Why, Mr. Siddons, you shock me. I think that might have been a compliment.”
“And you say you don’t know how to flirt,” he grumbled.
Elizabeth couldn’t contain the smile that welled up within her. Of all his compliments, the reluctant ones touched her the most.
He scowled at her, his expression turning almost boyishly petulant as he jammed the book back on the shelf. “Don’t let me catch you looking at that again.”
“I was only looking for a bit of advice,” she explained.
“If you need advice, I’ll give it to you.”
Her lips pursed for a brief second before she answered with, “I don’t think that’s appropriate in this case.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Mr. Siddons—”
“James,” he snapped.
“James,” she amended. “I don’t know what has propelled you into such a temper, but I do not appreciate your language. Or your tone.”
He let out a long exhale,
appalled at the way his body shuddered as he did so. His gut had been twisted in knots for nearly twenty-four hours, and all over this little slip of a female. She barely reached his shoulder, for God’s sake.
It had started with that kiss. No, he thought grimly, it had started long before that, with the anticipation, the wondering, the dreaming of what it would be to feel her mouth beneath his.
