How the Marquess Was Won by Julie Anne Long Read Free Book Online Page B

responsibilities were legion. His skill at delegating them was unparalleled. Because he of course, with an unerring instinct, hired the very best men for the jobs.
    Would that he could hire men of affairs to manage his family .
    “They are an ever-present responsibility, yes. The gossip sheets don’t write about the fact that I’ve arranged for new drainage ditches in my Hereford estates.”
    “Is that so?” She sounded fascinated. “Drainage ditches?”
    “Or that I’ve acquired an excellent herd of sheep and am profiting greatly from wool.”
    “Wool is one of England’s finest resources.”
    “And I served as an officer in the army.”
    “Very impressive. I’ve been told that war is boredom interspersed with violence and terror.”
    So she had known a few soldiers. In what way had she known the soldiers? he wondered. He could imagine the soldiers serving under his command being enchanted with her. It was the lively women they met on the Continent to whom they were ultimately grateful for making the war more bearable, not necessarily the beautiful ones.
    “Oh, that’s not all it is. If a man really applies himself in the army, he can learn an untold number of curse words and catch all manner of diseases. Not to mention acquire a few interesting scars.”
    “Have you any diseases?” Unflatteringly, she sounded more curious than concerned.
    “None that have a prayer of killing me or you in the course of this conversation.”
    Her smile appeared again, starting slowly and spreading. He liked the slow smile, because then it seemed to last longer, and light her face gradually, and it was like watching the sun rise. Or watching a . . . beginning. Of any kind.
    He was perilously close to feeling . . . well, happy , for lack of another word . . . in an unusual way, and yet his nerves felt pulled taut as harpsichord strings. It had been some time since he’d felt surprised by a conversation. Let alone a conversation with a woman. He couldn’t anticipate what she would say next, and this wasn’t true of anyone else he knew.
    Then again, he didn’t think he’d ever had a conversation with a schoolmistress.
    Confined.
    And now that she’d said it, he could almost feel the sides of an invisible box all around him.
    “And a man can make friends for life, too, in the army,” he said evenly, feeling the need to defend the institution. “It’s helpful to know who will die for you.”
    “And do you know?”
    “I do know. Do you?”
    Odd, but he thought a shadow darkened her eyes then. Whatever it was, it was there and gone just as quickly. And he’d learned in the space of this conversation that her eyes disguised very little.
    “Friends are important,” she agreed, instead.
    He raised his eyebrows to let her know he knew full well she’d dodged the question.
    She regarded him evenly and gave him back nothing but a pair of similarly raised brows. He suspected she would have grave difficulty ever hiding her thoughts completely, given how her eyes lit with humor and intelligence. The person she was, a crackling, complicated one, seemed to shine through.
    He really ought to attend to the business at hand.
    “Are you often bored, Miss . . . ?” Bloody hell. He’d breeding enough to be ashamed at the loss of her name.
    “Vale,” she reminded him, sweetly. Not offended. Amused.
    He couldn’t help it: he was genuinely curious. It had never occurred to him that any of the women with whom he was acquainted might be bored enough to bolt to Africa, of all places. They seemed so occupied , with things that mystified and often charmed him but when taken altogether, or God help him, discussed in his presence, sent him into the sort of foot-shifting, eye-darting, finger-drumming panic that not even having a pistol aimed his way could achieve. The minutiae of aristocratic womanhood. Embroidery and modistes and the like.
    And this was a woman who worked . Why should she be bored?
    “I am grateful for my work at