Read Online Romancing the Countess by Ashley March - Free Book Online Page B

he’d visited the George town house, the fury when he’d sent Angela’s letters flying to the floor. Wriothesly clung to his misery, while she did everything she could to escape it.
    How horrified he would be to discover she pitied him—probably even more so should he realize he helped strengthen her resolve. Regardless of what he said tonight, she wouldn’t bend to his wishes for her obedience—no matter that he was an earl, nor that part of her heart sank whenever she witnessed the despair in his eyes.
    Wriothesly stood inside the front doorway with a valise at each side. Scowling, as usual. Leah felt rather a perverse creature for taking pleasure in the way his expression darkened as she approached. Although a smile pulled at her lips, she subdued the motion and curtsied.
    “My Lord Wriothesly. I wasn’t aware you intended to come. The house party has already begun and we’re now—”
    “Consider my arrival a response to the rumors you’ve created.” He took her hand, even though it had been clasped with the other in front of her waist, and lifted it toward his lips. While he disguised the movement as a courtly gesture, Leah was more than conscious of the heated iron of his grip, the velvet-soft threat of his kiss as his mouth swept across her glove. The air of desolation surrounding him was gone, replaced only by anger.
    For the first time in their acquaintance of three years, she realized that the Earl of Wriothesly finally saw her. Not as another random society twit, not as Ian’s wife or widow, but as Leah George, individual and separate. Removed from the great horde of women who were not the seemingly perfect Lady Angela Wriothesly and placed into a much more specific category of one: Leah George. Despised. Loathsome. Enemy.
    Perhaps pitying him had been a mistake.
    Wriothesly released her hand. “I fear I’ve done you a grave disservice, Mrs. George. It appears I’ve overestimated your intelligence.”
    Leah winced as she flexed her fingers, noting how he didn’t apologize for grinding her joints together. Now that his grief seemed to have given way for the moment, all his energy appeared to be focused on scolding her.
    She tilted her head. “Are you sulking because you came too late for dinner?”
    “I thought I made my request for you to avoid a scandal clear enough for even a simpleton to understand, and yet here we are.”
    “Yes,” she murmured. “Here we are. Even though I never sent you an invitation.”
    “I suppose I should be pleased you’ve decided to continue wearing proper mourning clothes, widow’s cap and all.”
    “I decided to leave the silk night rail for my midnight tryst.”
    “And that you’ve maintained some sense of decorum by not walking about grinning like—”
    He broke off, treating her with a remarkably malevolent glare as she smiled from ear to ear. Leah reached up and patted his clenched jaw. It was a mistake, an action made only on impulse, and one that she regretted as soon as she touched him. But she couldn’t retreat now. “My poor Lord Wriothesly. It’s wrong of me to torture you, isn’t it? Please, come with me. I was about to make an announcement to our guests when you arrived.”
    “Our guests?” he echoed as she walked away.
    She began the ascent up the staircase, her back straight as she listened for his footsteps. Halfway up, he still hadn’t moved.
    “ Our guests?” he asked again when her feet touched the landing, his voice closer this time.
    Leah glanced over her shoulder, prepared to deny she’d ever said such a thing and provoke him into following after her.
    He stood at the bottom of the stairs, one hand clutching the newel post, his mouth formed in a narrow, demanding line. Recently it had been easy enough to relegate him to a masculine version of her mother: autocratic, impatient, unwilling to swerve from the strictures of society. But she possessed memories of Wriothesly before the carriage accident. The sound of his and Ian’s