Springtime Pleasures by Sandra Schwab Read Free Book Online Page B

masculine man, being so tall and, well, becoming.
    Very becoming.
    “Personally, I find catfish a bit of a nuisance,” Charlie said, her smile still firmly in place, despite the tingles that seemed to have taken up residence in the pit of her stomach. “Not only are most of them so monstrously big as to make it a real effort to drag them out of the water, but skinning them is rather tedious work, too.”
    He gave her a blank look. Perhaps he had never caught catfish before. She seemed to recall that Old Squire Nettles had imported them many, many years ago to Ardochlan, the village near St. Cuthbert’s. Therefore Charlie elaborated her point when she met Lord Chanderley again.
    “Cutting the skin beneath the head and then pulling it down, I mean. Tedious . And your hands stink .” She thought about this for a moment. “Perhaps not as a bad as scraping the scales off and getting them all over you, though. But breaking their backbone to get the innards out, now that I wholly detest! Truly, it makes me shudder just to think about it!” She gave a tiny shudder to prove her point, but also because it felt so very delicious when Lord Chanderley held her hand in his. She had not known that holding somebody’s hand could evoke such… such feelings . Overwhelming feelings. She wished they could dance the waltz so he would hold her hand all the time . But she had been told that young girls did not dance the waltz in London. It would be most improper—which was a gross unfairness, if she now thought about it.
    They went around and around each other again.
    “Well, better than eels, I suppose,” Charlie remarked somewhat absentmindedly because she was inwardly still smarting about the waltz. “Slimy, slippery things, eels. But they taste nice.” With a regretful pang, she let his hand go as she moved back in line. “Do you like eels?” she asked the lady standing next to her.
    She gave Charlie a confused look. “Ihls? Is that a new poet?”
    “A poet?” Charlie blinked. “No. It’s a fish.” She shook her head. My, but the people of London were a strange lot!
    ~*~
    Griffin climbed into his cousin’s carriage and flopped onto the seat opposite Boo. With a relieved groan, he stretched out his legs as far as the confined space allowed. “Oh, by gum! How’s a fellow to endure rounds and rounds of such damned overheated and overcrowded affairs?”
    Boo had the nerve to bellow a laugh. “It’s no laughing matter,” Griff said testily as the carriage jerked into motion. He frowned. “I don’t understand how you can stand to attend such monstrous events on a regular basis! All those giggling debutantes and chattering mamas!” Not to mention the gossipmongers, only waiting to get a bit between their teeth. “It’s enough to drive a man deranged!”
    Which only made his cousin laugh harder. “ One ball, Griff! You’re this disgruntled after only one ball?”
    Griff threw his hat at him. “It was a damned circus! Did you see how those matrons ogled me?” He threw up his hands in exasperation. “As if I were bloody damn naked!”
    “Which only means that they consider you a piece of prime flesh.” Boo’s grin nearly split his face in half.
    “Bloody hell!”
    “For their daughters, that is.”
    “Gaggle-toothed, cheese-faced chits,” Griff growled. “Bah! I felt like a horse at Tattersall’s!” He narrowed his eyes. “I would have thought that most would steer clear of me, given… you know.”
    Boo stifled a yawn and then shrugged. “You shouldn’t mind people like Greykin or Mrs Wilson, who hasn’t got a kind word for anyone. You’re the heir to a jolly earldom. So if the mamas parade their daughters in front of potato-faced me, they will most certainly parade them in front of you as well, what with you having a much nicer countenance and being a viscount to boot.”
    “Bah!” Gloom settled over Griff like a black thundercloud. In the following days, weeks, months he would have to endure