How to Wed a Baron Read Free Page B

Wigglesworth himself had overseen being created in the kitchens.
    â€œWill you be climbing down from your usual worrywart alts anytime soon, Wigglesworth?” Justin at last inquired lazily from the chair beside the window before the man could suffer some injury to himself for lack of anything to do. “Or will I be forced to find a bootjack in this decrepit establishment in order to remove my boots? You did notice this spot on the left toe, did you not?”
    Wigglesworth threw up his hands in horror and joy at the same time. How he needed to be needed. “ Merde! A spot? A smudge? Say it is not so!”
    Justin rubbed lightly beneath his nose, as it wouldn’t do to allow his valet to see him so amused at his expense. “Wigglesworth? Do you have anyidea what you’re saying, have been saying ever since you broke bread in the common room last night with the chevalier’s valet?”
    â€œYour pardon, my lord?” Wigglesworth asked as he ripped through the contents of one of the many pieces of luggage the baron required for an overnight stay on the road, at last coming out with a fresh white cloth and a tin of boot black. “And what is it I would have been saying?”
    â€œ Merde, Wigglesworth. You have been almost constantly parroting the word merde all the morning long.”
    Wigglesworth dropped a small rug fashioned just for the purpose in front of his lordship’s chair before carefully placing his mauve satin-clad knee to it and motioning for his lordship to, if he pleased, lift the leg currently bearing the offending footwear.
    â€œYes, I have, haven’t I? Frenchmen are by nature a filthy people, but their language is quite melodious, don’t you think? So much better to say merde than mercy, which sounds so…plebian.”
    Justin allowed his good angel and his naughty angel a few moments of debate before deciding he should be a better man. “ Merde is not French for mercy, Wigglesworth. It is, in point of fact—and forgive my blushes—the word employed most often by the French in referring to…excrement.”
    Wigglesworth, who prided himself on having risen from the depths of being put out as a chimneysweep in Piccadilly forty years previously to the heights of caring for arguably the most exquisite gentleman in this or any realm, looked up at the baron with tears in his eyes. “I am devastated, my lord. Ashamed. Aghast. Humiliated.”
    â€œYes, I should think you would be. Shall I give you the sack?” Justin asked him as Wigglesworth applied boot black and began rubbing an invisible mar with everything that was in his pitifully thin body.
    â€œIf it would be your wish, my lord.”
    Damn. It was difficult to joke with Wigglesworth. The man was much too committed, too serious. “No, I shan’t dismiss you. After all, if you left you’d probably take Brutus with you. I would miss his conversation.”
    â€œBrutus doesn’t speak, my lord,” the literal-minded Wigglesworth pointed out as he gave one last swipe at the boot and stood up once more.
    â€œPrecisely. Which puts him head and shoulders above most people. He can be counted on to never say anything boring. Ah, much better, thank you. I shall now not be ashamed to show myself in public.” He looked toward the window once more, and frowned to see a new flag blowing in the breeze. “Wigglesworth, it would seem the lady’s ship has just dropped anchor. Promise me you will not flee screaming from the docks if she should not be all you believe necessary in my wife.”
    â€œI will do my utmost to contain myself,” the valet promised. “It remains to be known what you will do, my lord.”
    Justin accepted his hat from the valet and headed for the door. “Prinny took refuge in cherry brandy, as I’ve heard it told, when he first espied his affianced bride. I think I’d rather face my potential demon fully sober.