Practically Wicked Read Free

grown happily dim in his memory.
    “I am truly sorry for the loss of your brother,” Miss Rees corrected patiently. “However, I cannot continue to keep company with you in here, like this. I may not come from good ton, but I am an unmarried young woman, and as a gentleman, you—”
    “Good Lord, child, where did you acquire the impression I was a gentleman?”
    “Very well,” she conceded. “As a viscount , you are expected, at the very least, to make a show of adhering to the strictures governing a gentleman’s behavior, and as such, you must respect my wish to not risk being seen in—”
    “Oh, for God’s sake,” he groaned, “just go .”
    A lecture of what he must do was the last thing he wanted to listen to at present. He’d done nothing but follow the mandates of others for the first three-and-twenty years of his life. It had been an appalling experience. He had discovered in the two years since that it was far better to be a disappointment than a pawn. Better still if he didn’t have to suffer through someone else’s long-winded opinion on the matter.
    Miss Rees glanced at the bellpull, then back to him. “Will you allow me to ring for—?”
    “No.” If he couldn’t sit with the pretty lady, he’d sit alone for a bit and find his own way back downstairs.
    “As you like,” she murmured and turned and walked away with the flowing grace that had helped cement her nickname as the Ice Maiden.
    “Like gliding on ice,” he mumbled. “’Snot natural.”
    Giving no indication of having heard the comment, she reached the door, paused with her hand on the handle, and looked back with a pleading expression. “ Please allow me to ring for assistance.”
    “No.”
    “But I—”
    “No.”
    A small crease formed between the dark arcs of her brows. “You can’t mean to—”
    “Unaccustomed to hearing the word ‘no,’ aren’t you?”
    Her lips thinned. “I ought to have left you in the hall.”
    “Regrets are like mistresses,” he informed her.
    “I…” Her hand dropped from the handle. “What?”
    “Good men don’t have them.”
    She blinked at that, then broke into a soft laughter that sent pleasant chills along his skin. “That is the most ridiculous adage I have ever heard.”
    “I’m foxed,” he pointed out and shrugged. “I’m cleverer when…cleverer? Is it cleverer? Or is it more clever? Whichever. I’m brilliant when I’m sober.”
    “And less inclined to announce it, one might hope.” With a resigned sigh, she reached for the door handle again, but this time, she locked the door and dropped the key in her pocket.
    “You move like a queen,” he said quietly as she crossed the room and resumed her seat in front of him. “On ice skates. What did you just do?”
    “I locked the door.”
    “Yes, I know.” He was drunk, not blind. “Why?”
    “To avoid another inebriated guest stumbling in upon us by accident.”
    “You mean to stay?” he asked, not quite believing it.
    Avoiding his gaze, she brushed a smoothing hand down the sleeve of one arm. “You won’t allow me to call for someone else.”
    “And you aren’t willing to leave me sitting here all alone? That is…unexpected.” He leaned in for a closer inspection of her features. “Aren’t you supposed to be frigid and uncaring?”
    She looked at him, her eyes narrowing just a hair. “Aren’t you supposed to be charming?”
    He grinned at her, appreciating the sharp retort. “I’ll have you know, I could talk the devil out of his tail.”
    “I’m not a devil, Mr. Dane.”
    “No…I believe you might be an angel.”
    “And I believe the reports of your charm have been grossly exaggerated.”
    “It was trite, wasn’t it?” He propped his elbow on the table, rested his chin in his hand, and studied her features at leisure. “There is something…otherworldly about you. The eyes, I think. But they’re not angelic. They’re fae.”
    “They’re merely sober.”
    “Equally disconcerting. Why is