Lady Elinor's Wicked Adventures Read Free Page B

Norrie.
    She had hugged him right there on the street, and this evening she had teased him just the way she teased Pip. She twitted Pip for his new moustache and she twitted him for being still clean-shaven when even her father had grown a small beard. In short, she treated him like a brother.
    He had thought that was what he wanted. He had told himself he would be able to think of her as a sister.
    He had been a fool.
    She was so damn beautiful, even more so than when he left. She had been a lovely girl then. Now she was a beautiful woman. Not one of those simpering little dolls that seemed to be the fashion. She had a luscious mouth that begged to be kissed, and a bosom that promised paradise. And then there were those aquamarine eyes. He could never decide if they actually did tilt up at the edge or if it was just the way her brows slanted. A man could spend hours just staring at her eyes.
    She may not have been married, but it was still true that she treated him like a brother, just as she always had. Why wouldn’t she? For all those years he had been turning up for school vacations along with Pip, and the three of them had played together, gone fishing together, gone riding together. He and Pip had even taught her to play Rugby football, and she had mastered the tackle very well. He could remember her delight the time—she couldn’t have been more than nine—when she knocked him sprawling in the mud. Why wouldn’t she think of him as a brother?
    All right. He could manage that. One thing he had learned in his travels was a bit of self-discipline. It would not be easy to treat her like a sister, to have her treat him like a brother, but if that was all he could have, so be it. At least he would be able to see her and be part of her family. He would be able to protect her.
    It would not be easy, but it was better than nothing.
    * * *
    Lady Elinor allowed Martha, her nursery maid turned lady’s maid, to remove her clothing, hand her the soap and towel to wash, brush and braid her hair, tuck it into a nightcap, and put her into a warm flannel nightgown. But instead of snuggling under the covers as she usually did, once the maid was gone, Elinor wrapped herself in a woolen shawl and curled up on the window seat to look out on the darkness.
    She smiled when she saw that a few stars were actually visible in the London sky. What with the rain and the fog, that didn’t happen very often. Perhaps it was a good sign.
    She could hardly believe that Harry was back. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed him. It was as if she saw him on the street and thought, “Oh yes, that’s what I’ve been missing.”
    She didn’t know why—it couldn’t be anything romantic, after all—but he just seemed so much more real, so much more alive than any of the other young men she knew. Maybe it was just that he had gone off and had adventures, wandered around the world and seen all kinds of different people, done all sorts of things. Everyone else she knew had just done all the expected things, turned up at dinners and dances, said all the things they were supposed to say, done the things they were supposed to do.
    Just as she had.
    Was she bored? She considered that possibility. No, that wasn’t it precisely.
    She was envious—that’s what it was.
    Harry had gone to exciting places and met exciting people while she had stayed home and done nothing, nothing more exciting than flirting and dancing. It had been fun, and she had enjoyed it, but it didn’t seem to be enough. She wanted more.
    Did she seem terribly dull to him? He had probably met sophisticated and glamorous women—and maybe done more than just meet them. After all, he had been gone for four whole years. It would be foolish to assume he had led a monkish existence. Even Pip, stuffy though he might sometimes be, had affairs that she and Mama pretended not to know about.
    But that didn’t matter