How To School Your Scoundrel by Juliana Gray Read Free Book Online Page A

lordship’s instruction. You may show me to my room, which I believe is directly adjacent to that of his lordship. We will be in close fellowship, you understand.” She swept toward the stairs, leaving her valise behind her on the gleaming marble floor.
    Confidence. From her earliest days, she could remember her father reminding her of its importance. Whatever your chosen action, act with decision, Prince Rudolf would tell her. People follow the confident. Doubt is the arsenic of leadership.
    Well, she wasn’t leading anything now, except perhaps Quincy. But the principle applied to theater as well, and she was acting the part of her life.
    The butler hastened past to lead her up the stairs. She lifted her finger and stroked the silken crown of Quincy’s head as they climbed upward, past the first-floor landing and the fleeting glimpse of silk-papered drawing room and book-lined library, and on to the second floor where the principal bedrooms would be found.
    Luisa had understood English married couples to subscribe to the quaint custom of interconnecting rooms, so she was mildly surprised to find that the Earl of Somerton, when he had pronounced
the suite next to mine
, had really meant it. Surely this was intended as the countess’s room, grandly proportioned, sumptuously upholstered in blues and cheerful yellows, overlooking the back garden, fitted with a dressing room and its own modern bathroom en suite, to say nothing of a pair of paneled doors leading suggestively to the other bedchamber. But her portmanteau and her trunk of books sat unmistakably in the center of the rug near the fire. The butler made way and watched her as she prowled about, inspecting the weave of the silken bed hangings and the polish of the Chippendale highboy, and didn’t say a word.
    “It will do,” she pronounced. “Though the colors are not so much to my taste as those in my chamber at the embassy. Have you hot water taps?” She nodded to the bathroom door.
    “Of course,” said the butler indignantly. What was his name? She used to be good at remembering servants’ names, but now she couldn’t find the word. Round syllables. Something solid and commonplace. Roberts?
    A footman strode through the door, bearing her valise. She smiled at him, and then at the butler.
    Johnson. That was it.
    “Excellent. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. No, no, my good man.” She waved the footman away. “I’ll unpack myself. I have some particularly delicate objects I should not wish to hazard.”
    “Very good, Mr. Markham.” The footman straightened and backed away.
    Mr. Johnson was still glowering near the door. “Will that be all, sir?”
    “Quite. Thank you terribly.”
    He bowed, as stiffly and slightly as possible, and turned to pass through the doorway. “Your ladyship!” he said, from the hall.
    A woman’s quiet voice answered him. Luisa strained her ears, but she couldn’t make out the words. She crossed the room and glanced through the doorway, just before Johnson closed it, and in that quarter of an instant an image flashed before Luisa of perhaps the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen, including her second and final stepmother, God rest her soul. Her hair was dark and her eyes were . . . well, Luisa couldn’t see the color, but they were large and appealing, and her lips a perfect rosy bow, and her figure . . .
    Luisa found herself staring at the closed door. Quincy jumped from her elbow and scurried to the crack of daylight beneath it, whining and scrabbling at the dark floorboards.
    “Men,” Luisa muttered.
    When Luisa crossed the doorway of the Earl of Somerton’s private study at ten minutes to six that evening, she was surprised to see its owner already seated behind his desk, scribbling furiously. He looked up at her entrance, and the scowl on his magnificent bleak face made her breath clog in her throat.
    “Sit down.” He indicated the small desk near his own and returned to his work.
    Luisa stalked to her station