Read Online Elisabeth Fairchild by Valentine's Change of Heart - Free Book Online

door on the room that made her so uncomfortable. His room.
    She watched uncertainly, demurely strangling the lamp’s neck.
    “Anxious?”
    Her chin lifted. A trace of offended defiance lit her eyes. “No, my lord.”
    She lies. She is anxious, even afraid--of me, of the position I offer, of this summons from my bedchamber, of how close I stand. She kept looking at his bared forearms, as if his skin were dangerous enough to keep her poised to run.
    “You look rather anxious.”
    She shook her head again, eyes downcast.
    “I had hoped you might be.”
    That won him a frown. How forbidding the ordinarily demure sweetness of that face when she frowned.
    “I love a good story, myself.”
    “Story? Oh! Story. I did not think . . .”
    “But of course you did--think,” he said. “It is why I wish to hire you--for that thinking mind of yours.”
    She looked at him, earnestly trying to understand when he deliberately meant to confuse.
    He stopped outside the doorway to his daughter’s room, hand on the latch. “There are dragons of course, and fairies, and spells that must be broken, princesses in need of rescuing, all sorts of intriguing dangers. But only in storybooks. I am no dragon. I vow to you, I cast no spells. You need not fear me, nor the taking of this position.”
    She wet her lips with the nervous dart of her tongue. “No, my lord?”
    “And yet you do.”
    Fear peered from the dark drink of her eyes. The lamplight wavered, wick burning low. He reached out to adjust its height, careful not to brush her fingers.
    She seemed bent on the same objective. In a small movement, a casual twitch, she inched her hand away from his.
    “You did nothing to tempt him, did you?”
    She blinked, as if he had slapped her across the face with the question. The oil in the lamp swayed.
    “Palmer?”
    Light flared briefly in her eyes as the wick burned higher. Or was it anger flashing there?
    “No, my lord. Nothing.” Heat in her response. Definitely anger.
    “Then you’ve no reason to be anxious.” He flung open the door.
     
    Confused by his roundaboutation, she followed him into his daughter’s room. He was deliberately confusing, at once direct and indirect. And she was intrigued.
    The room boasted a crackling fireplace that blessedly did not smoke, a window that looked down over a busy street, and a rather large curtained off dressing room fully accoutered with a hip bath, French commode, a full-length mirror, and two large pitchers and basins on a marble-topped washstand piled with armloads of fresh white linens.
    The bedchamber’s furnishing consisted of two walnut framed beds and a tall clothes press. The beds stood at cross-purposes to one another, creating an L against two of the walls. Felicity was tucked into the larger of the two. She had insisted that Elaine must share it with her rather than make a pallet upon the floor. Mrs. Olive sat upon the other.
    Valentine Wharton sank onto the bed his daughter occupied.
    She seemed used to this arrangement, and made room for him. Once he was settled, lamps and candles positioned just so for the best available reading light, the book opened, the right page found, Felicity leaned closer. His lordship situated his arm more comfortably behind her, and tilted the book that she might better see the painted illustrations.
    Elaine went to the window seat. It seemed inappropriate to sit too close to Valentine Wharton even while he focused on his daughter. There was danger in him. She had never known a man more overtly dangerous, of more monstrous reputation.
    Wharton looked up from the page. For a single heartbeat his eyes locked with hers. His well-shaped brows lifted, as if he found something amusing in the distance she placed between them. As if he knew her fear. As if he reveled in it.
    Felicity called out in wheedling tones, “Come sit with us, my Deering. Ooops!” Her hands flew to her mouth to stifle a burst of laughter. “I mean . . .”
    His lordship could not