Royally Ever After by Loretta Chase Read Free Book Online Page B

He’d let his clothes dry while on him. His neckcloth had deteriorated to a wrinkled lump, his shirtsleeves hung like limp rags from his broad shoulders, his trousers sagged at the knees, and his boots had acquired a crust of dried muck.
    She took in the sight in the instant before he looked up.
    â€œOh, Rothwick, you haven’t even changed out of your clothes,” she said.
    He stared at her for a moment as though he didn’t recognize her. Then his dark eyes narrowed. “Not an apparition, it seems. No such luck. We’re done, Miss Findley. Didn’t you say so? Go away. Forgive me for not getting up, but I don’t want to encourage you. You shouldn’t have encouraged me, by the way—but it’s ungentlemanly to point that out.”
    â€œYou’re foxed,” she said.
    â€œAm I? Good. I’ve been trying damn hard.”
    This was what she got for hesitating and dithering. If she’d come sooner, he’d still be lucid. What could she expect to accomplish now? She wanted to go back out and close the door behind her and get started on the long process of making herself forget him.
    But the image hung in her mind’s eye: the brief, unguarded moment when he’d looked at her letter and she’d seen . . . a something in his eyes that might have been grief. A degree more evident was the disappointment that drew down the corners of his firm mouth.
    And yes, it was most likely the money he was disappointed about, but there was only one way to be sure.
    â€œI should never have expected this of you,” she said. “Getting drunk after being jilted. Could you not do something less clichéd?”
    He cocked an eyebrow. “A sharp-tongued wench it is. You’d have been the devil to live with. I’m well out of it.”
    â€œYou’re not the most accommodating individual yourself,” she said. “You come storming into a place—fee, fie, foe, fum—knocking aside any small, annoying things that get in the way. Like people.”
    â€œIf you refer to those pests who were sniffing at your skirts, that’s exactly what one does with vermin.”
    â€œIn my world, those are eligible men,” she said. “But they haven’t titles—”
    â€œOr a shilling to their name—”
    â€œNeither have you,” she said.
    â€œBut I’m an aristocratic debtor,” he said. He waved his wine glass in the air. “No, better than that—a peer. They can’t imprison me for debt. I should have ignored it, the way my father did. Trouble is . . .” He brought the glass close to his face, swayed the glass a little, and watched the wine slosh against its sides. “Trouble is, the houses are falling down. On my head. Plaster.” He looked up at the ceiling of the inn parlor. “Sitting there at home, drinking a little wine, minding my own business, and down come little bits of the ceiling.”
    He drank, set down the glass on the table at his elbow, and refilled it from one of the bottles crowding its surface. “Is that what put you off?” he said. “Everything falling to pieces? But it isn’t every room. Didn’t I tell you that?”
    â€œYou told me,” she said. He’d described the state of his houses and properties with a disarmingly matter-of-fact wit. Everyone said he was an overbearing, conceited, arrogant bastard. But she thought he was charming, and funny, too. And she found his sarcasm sweet. He was nothing like any other man she’d ever met, and she’d met scores. From the time she was seventeen, they’d been descending upon Little Etford to try their luck at winning her heart—and the ridiculous marriage portion her father had saddled her with.
    All in hopes of this.
    A title.
    And of all the men, all the well-behaved, eager-to-please men, she had to fall in love with him .
    â€œVery well,” he said, nodding. “No hard