AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“With the most effective incapacitation for a sharpish scarper.” And he winked.
His daughter giggled, doldrums shifting as fast as Hopping Ned’s toes. “Yes. Yes, I think I could teach that. I’ll ask her if she’d like to attend a lesson. Now, which waistcoat are you wearing for dinner?”
“I can’t, pet. The chap’s coming to fix the weighing machine.” The mood swung to grouchy again. “But we are all going to the prizefight together on the morrow.”
“But you told me…” She stabbed him with a governess glare exactly akin to Miss Griffin’s. “That ladies do not attend fights.”
“Your governess won’t be attending as a lady but as a nefarious footpad on the prowl. It was all Kian’s suggestion to take her, anyhow.”
“Ah.” Chloe nodded sagely as though all was explained. “And I suppose she couldn’t refuse him. Not with those blue eyes of his.”
Seth scowled and crossed to the wardrobe to throw on a loose jacket. “And I suppose mine are a boring brown?”
“I asked Miss Griffin today what colour she considered your eyes, and do you know what she said?”
“I have no wish to know.” He’d learned with Chloe that if he wanted to know something, it was better to deny it.
“Oh. I shan’t tell you then.”
Perhaps he’d done it too often. “Daughter of mine?” And he produced that look of fathers.
Chloe grinned. “She said they were a mysterious mixture of spring’s nature and autumn’s earth.”
Seth scratched his chin. “Is that good?”
His daughter rolled her eyes. “If we notice, we notice. If we don’t, they are mere brown.”
“Oh, I see.” He didn’t.
His daughter sighed that ancestral sigh of generations of womenfolk…and tutted for good measure. “What colour are Miss Griffin’s, Pa? A mere brown?”
“Gads, no. An elegant mixture of brandy and sherry and…my amber stickpin.” Oh, he did see. “Chloe, you are frighteningly perceptive when you want to be.”
“Hmm. I obviously didn’t inherit that from you.”
Cheeky blighter, and she shrieked as his cravat landed on her head, whilst deep inside Seth, a glow kindled.
He’d avoided Miss Griffin this day, not seeking to crowd her, not wishing to know if her memories had been drowned in Porter Ale or if her request had solely come from an impulse for adventure.
Yet with Chloe’s disclosure about his eyes, surely she felt…something.
* * *
Matilda felt rather dreadful.
Yawning, she plodded up the stairs with feet like dumb-bells and legs of lead weights, the late night and Porter Ale having, as Betty had succinctly put it, “done her in”.
Dinner had been a quiet affair with just Chloe, although Matilda’s appetite had returned, and they’d tucked into Betty’s finest chicken and peas.
With such weariness, however, thoughts of wretchedness now prevailed…
Last night in the darkness of the carriage with ale and life coursing her veins, asking one’s handsome employer for a kiss had seemed such a good idea.
Yet in the light of day, it seemed such a bad idea.
He must think her a harlot. One who had the responsibility of teaching his daughter morals and virtue.
Truly, she must strive to remember her chosen vocation and not become distracted by caring fighters with crooked noses and fiercely carnal hands, eyes and chest. And lips.
