Read Online An Extraordinary Flirtation by Maggie MacKeever - Free Book Online

alongside a maidenhair tree. Daisy burst through the undergrowth, a stout stick in her mouth.
    After a brief tussle for possession, Cara threw the branch. Daisy raced happily in pursuit. The setter would need a good brushing after this adventure. Already her silky coat was tangled with twigs and burrs. Cara wouldn’t be surprised if she’d acquired some vegetation in her own hair.
    Along a weathered garden wall—stone, with niches for statues that had either disappeared altogether or deteriorated sadly with time and neglect—bloomed a lone pink peony. Cara smiled, remembering Baron Fitzrichard’s waistcoat. Thought of Fitz reminded her in turn of Lord Mannering, and Zoe. As well as of her sudden role as the family expert on propriety, which was a sad comment on her life. Cara grabbed a handful of weeds, and yanked.
    A pattern-card of propriety! The odious man had laughed at her. Zoe could hardly be blamed for setting her cap at Mannering, for the marquess was handsome as the devil, with his dark hair that gleamed gold and russet in the candlelight, his high cheekbones and chiseled jaw; the lines of laughter and sensuality around his dark eyes and wicked mouth; that muscular body that wasn’t camouflaged a whit by finely tailored clothes.
    Cara decimated a passion flower. Daisy burst out of the bushes, stick clenched between her teeth. Cara reached out to throw the stick, but Daisy was off and barking before she had the chance.
    Beau, who was making his wary way along one of the stone paths, heard the barking and flinched. Like Baron Fitzrichard before him, Beau had the devil of a head. His excesses of the previous evening had naught to do, however, with macao and champagne, but rather resulted from a romantic tryst. What had happened there—or rather, hadn’t happened—had led him to drown his disappointment, and the lady’s, in drink. Beau supposed he should not be surprised that his amatory skills had begun to fail him, though in all the history of the family such a thing had never happened before. It was just another part of the general misery that seemed determined to assail him from all sides at this stage of his life.
    As Daisy seemed determined to assail him. “Down! Quiet!” he said. Daisy dashed off and returned, tail eagerly wagging, with her stick in her mouth. Gingerly he grasped the sodden thing and threw it a good distance. Daisy dashed off in pursuit.
    Beau continued along the path. Widdle had informed him that “the lady” was in the garden. Beau assumed that “the lady” was Cara, since Widdle referred to Zoe as “the demoiselle” and Ianthe as “the mistress,” despite all attempts to gently persuade him to do otherwise. Even Zoe hesitated to distress Widdle lest he take umbrage, because heaven only knew what sort of butler they might end up with next.
    Beau found Cara contemplating a dense and spiny evergreen shrub ripe with clusters of golden yellow flowers. “What are you doing here?” he said irritably. “Why didn’t you go with Zoe and Ianthe to visit the shops?”
    Cara brushed dirt off her hands. Beau’s legendary tight-fistedness didn’t extend to his daughter, who had vowed she would expire if denied a new dress. “I sent Barrow in my place. She knows my measurements. And I suspect her tastes are more refined than mine.”
    Widdle’s tastes were more refined than Cara’s. Beau eyed her ancient morning dress. “Bad enough that you went about like a dowd in the country, but you’re in London now.”
    Cara, as has been established, was in no good mood herself. She plopped her hands on her hips and glared, “Perhaps I shall introduce a haystack or a woodpile to your garden. Since my preferences are of so rustic a bent! Or perhaps I shall just take my provincial self back home.”
    “Perhaps you should.” With his lower lip thrust out, Beau looked remarkably like his daughter in a pet. “You’re here to look after Zoe, are you not? A trifle difficult to do while hiding