Read Online Gentlemen Prefer Mischief by Emily Greenwood - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Emily Greenwood
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Season.
Longing pierced her unexpectedly, though she couldn’t understand why. They were just a group of fashionable people whiling away the evening with carefree entertainments.
And yet it was that very carefree quality she so scorned that made her yearn. Her life at Thistlethwaite was good; she loved her siblings, and she felt fulfilled by her shawl business and her secret plans for the school. But she never felt carefree. She didn’t think she knew how. She’d always been the responsible one, whether she’d wanted to be that or not.
Even her father had called her that. You’re my serious one, he’d say when, drunk from a boozy luncheon, he’d lean on her as he climbed the stairs to his room. Just like your mother, God rest her soul.
When their mother had died, he’d taken Lily aside and said, Your sister is only seven, and she still needs a mother’s care. Nanny has to go, so you’ll have to do your best with Delia.
Nanny’s departure was the beginning of the economies they’d had to make to enable Papa’s investments. Lily had never minded helping with Delia, but a sore part of her had wished that a twelve-year-old might be expected to miss a mother, too.
Go over to Dimble’s for me , he would say, words that had made her quiver. Dimble was the wine merchant, and the father of her childhood friend. He won’t say no to you.
And Mr. Dimble never had, but she saw each time in his eyes that her family paid their bills too slowly. Her father had been a good man, but when their mother died, he surrendered to drink.
With her older brothers away at school, she, as the oldest girl, was the one who’d had to oversee the household. She was the one left to take care of many of the details of life for herself and her father and Delia. Along with duties like keeping the household accounts were never-acknowledged ones, like providing explanations for her father’s sometimes odd behavior to neighbors and servants.
She’d vowed back then that she’d never let herself become like him: out of control, muddled with drink, dependent. Even now, through the blurring of years, she still hated the waste and the shame of that time, which had been crowned with the utter foolishness of giving her a Season they couldn’t afford.
She made herself look away from the scene in the drawing room because she realized that the sight of Eloise—young, beautiful, and cheerfully falling in love with gentlemen—was threatening to engulf her in envy. Why should she envy Eloise when she had a very good life now? Why should she want anything else? What was wrong with her?
She trained her eyes resolutely on the viscount’s window and focused on her plan. It was after eleven and the men had to be gone. Aside from the drawing room, there was no sign of activity; most of the servants would have retired, though some would still be about, and she would have to be very quiet. She moved toward the knobby old tree outside Roxham’s window and put on her gloves.
The climbing was harder than she’d imagined it would be, and it was quickly borne in on her that the last time she’d been up a tree she’d been ten. But the thought of Roxham reading her journal was enough to force her past trepidation, so that without quite knowing how she’d gotten herself there, she had reached his tall window. All was silent, except for the tiny sound of the distant piano. She put a foot on the windowsill and stepped inside.
It was very dark in his bedchamber, and she pushed the curtains wide to let in the little moonlight there was and allowed her eyes to adjust to the thicker blackness of his room. Traces of his scent teased her, the cedar notes of his soap coupled with the expensive smell of an immaculately cleaned room full of beeswax-polished furniture. A luxuriously thick rug under her feet absorbed the sound of her movements.
She suffered the despairing thought, which she’d previously refused to consider, that her journal might not even be in
Longing pierced her unexpectedly, though she couldn’t understand why. They were just a group of fashionable people whiling away the evening with carefree entertainments.
And yet it was that very carefree quality she so scorned that made her yearn. Her life at Thistlethwaite was good; she loved her siblings, and she felt fulfilled by her shawl business and her secret plans for the school. But she never felt carefree. She didn’t think she knew how. She’d always been the responsible one, whether she’d wanted to be that or not.
Even her father had called her that. You’re my serious one, he’d say when, drunk from a boozy luncheon, he’d lean on her as he climbed the stairs to his room. Just like your mother, God rest her soul.
When their mother had died, he’d taken Lily aside and said, Your sister is only seven, and she still needs a mother’s care. Nanny has to go, so you’ll have to do your best with Delia.
Nanny’s departure was the beginning of the economies they’d had to make to enable Papa’s investments. Lily had never minded helping with Delia, but a sore part of her had wished that a twelve-year-old might be expected to miss a mother, too.
Go over to Dimble’s for me , he would say, words that had made her quiver. Dimble was the wine merchant, and the father of her childhood friend. He won’t say no to you.
And Mr. Dimble never had, but she saw each time in his eyes that her family paid their bills too slowly. Her father had been a good man, but when their mother died, he surrendered to drink.
With her older brothers away at school, she, as the oldest girl, was the one who’d had to oversee the household. She was the one left to take care of many of the details of life for herself and her father and Delia. Along with duties like keeping the household accounts were never-acknowledged ones, like providing explanations for her father’s sometimes odd behavior to neighbors and servants.
She’d vowed back then that she’d never let herself become like him: out of control, muddled with drink, dependent. Even now, through the blurring of years, she still hated the waste and the shame of that time, which had been crowned with the utter foolishness of giving her a Season they couldn’t afford.
She made herself look away from the scene in the drawing room because she realized that the sight of Eloise—young, beautiful, and cheerfully falling in love with gentlemen—was threatening to engulf her in envy. Why should she envy Eloise when she had a very good life now? Why should she want anything else? What was wrong with her?
She trained her eyes resolutely on the viscount’s window and focused on her plan. It was after eleven and the men had to be gone. Aside from the drawing room, there was no sign of activity; most of the servants would have retired, though some would still be about, and she would have to be very quiet. She moved toward the knobby old tree outside Roxham’s window and put on her gloves.
The climbing was harder than she’d imagined it would be, and it was quickly borne in on her that the last time she’d been up a tree she’d been ten. But the thought of Roxham reading her journal was enough to force her past trepidation, so that without quite knowing how she’d gotten herself there, she had reached his tall window. All was silent, except for the tiny sound of the distant piano. She put a foot on the windowsill and stepped inside.
It was very dark in his bedchamber, and she pushed the curtains wide to let in the little moonlight there was and allowed her eyes to adjust to the thicker blackness of his room. Traces of his scent teased her, the cedar notes of his soap coupled with the expensive smell of an immaculately cleaned room full of beeswax-polished furniture. A luxuriously thick rug under her feet absorbed the sound of her movements.
She suffered the despairing thought, which she’d previously refused to consider, that her journal might not even be in
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