Lord Langley Is Back in Town by Elizabeth Boyle Read Free Book Online Page A

why the servants muttered about her and Thomas-William got that nervous twitch in his eye every time her name was mentioned.
    Nor was she done with him. “So you’ve not only damaged my house, but now you are going to damage my standing? I am a respectable widow.”
    He grinned at her. “I’ve known many a respectable widow in my day.”
    “I am not that sort of lady!”
    “Apparently not,” he replied, glancing once again at the window.
    “I demand that you leave at once!” she insisted.
    Good God! She was every inch the bossy bit of muslin that Thomas-William claimed. And utterly English in her superiority.
    Much to his chagrin, Langley had to admit to being a bit charmed.
    She continued on in quite an abominable fashion. “Lord Langley, I’ll have you know I deplore scandal! Nor will I be party to your . . . your . . . your common, ruffian ways!”
    “Ruffian?” He ignored the “common” part of her snub. “The ladies outside this door would probably argue with such a description of my character.”
    She snorted in reply. Apparently she held them in just as much contempt as she did his “ruffian” inclinations. “Then I’ll open the door and straighten them out on the subject.”
    “Oh, no you won’t,” he told her, cutting off her path.
    “I’ll shoot,” she warned.
    “Please do,” he offered. “Better you, my lovely firing squad, than being torn limb from limb from limb by those silken clad wolves.” He tossed a knowing glance toward the door.
    She appeared to be considering his words, as if they might be a good suggestion. But finally she stepped away from the door, shooting him a baleful glance. “Do not consider this a concession,” she said, “for I am not all that unconvinced that you’d be the only one to be ripped apart in the melee.”
    Smart minx.
    “Then, my dear Lady Standon, if it comes to that, stay away from the window. I do believe an open sash was how Tasha got rid of her first husband.”
    Her eyes widened even as there was another rattle of the hinges. This time the door groaned in protest and looked all but ready to give way. Tasha’s footman had most likely arrived. “If you were a respectable gentleman, those . . . those . . .” She waved the pistol at the door as she searched for the words to describe the pack of females beyond.
    “Houseguests?” he offered, rocking on his heels, grinning at her. Whyever was he enjoying this? He was about to meet his maker, or at the very least the last four women he ever wanted to encounter again, and all he could do was tease this one.
    An irate, entirely proper and upstanding English marchioness.
    God, he’d missed Britain.
    “You jest? This is hardly funny,” she told him as her door shuddered anew. “And now my door is to be ruined as well.”
    “You could open it yourself,” he said, stepping aside. “And feed me to the wolves, as I suggested before.”
    “Don’t think I wouldn’t like to, but the moment that door opens I’m ruined.” She looked amusingly fierce—standing in the middle of the room in her plain white night rail, her hair falling in a thick braid over one shoulder, pistol in her hand. Unfortunately it was too dark to make out the color of her eyes, the hue of her hair, the true line of her curves beneath that ugly, voluminous night rail.
    Egads, was it flannel? Whatever had happened to England since he’d left that they were swathing their women in flannel?
    This had to be one of the more devastating results of overturning the French.
    And English modesty aside, he made another point. “Lady Standon, you place too much value in respectability. Believe me, it rarely leaves one with an epitaph worth remembering.”
    “I can well imagine yours!”
    He grinned and leaned closer. “Can you now?”
    “Oh!” she sputtered and stepped away from him. “None of this would be happening if you were a respectable man. True to your title.”
    Langley closed his eyes and shuddered. “And let