Read Online The Notorious Nobleman by Nancy Lawrence - Free Book Online

thanks to you! You were a
horrid patient, you know. But now that your arm has healed
sufficiently, I shall at last have the answer to a question that
has been plaguing me for the last three days.”
    “ What question is that?”
    “ Whether it is your habit to be
difficult  Or was it your
wound that made you so surly and unpleasant?”
    His dark brows flew skyward in momentary
surprise, but he said, quite temperately, “I am always unpleasant.
Didn’t you know?”
    “ Oh, yes!” she answered, unable to
cudgel her brain into forming a more sensible reply. She did manage
to recall her manners, however, and invited him to sit down. Too
late she realized the dress she had been repairing was spread
across the chair.
    “ Oh, dear! Let me move that for
you.”
    “ Do not let me interrupt your work,” he
said, politely, as she gathered up the dress.
    “ Oh, this? Why it is only an old gown I
have been reworking so I may wear it again to the assembly. I’ve
added bows to the sleeves, you see. It is nothing,
really!”
    He cast her an odd look. “Adding bows to a
nightgown might be nothing; adding bows to a dress to make it
fashionable is another matter altogether, in my opinion.”
    “ I confided to you my present
circumstance. I never dreamed you would one day make sport of
it.”
    “ You mistake. Your circumstance, as you
call it, rubs too much against my grain for me to make sport of
it.” His eyes settled upon her. “What’s that on your
head?”
    She started, and her fingertips flew to her
cap, fully expecting to find a spider or some other equally
distasteful object lurking there. Patting frantically about, she
found nothing out of the way. “Why do you ask? What do you
see?”
    “ I see a dreadful bit of cloth covering
your hair. Why are you wearing it?”
    “ My cap? Why—I am a widow
and  !”
    “ You were not wearing it the other day
when we met.”
    “ No, no, I wasn’t.”
    “ It covers your hair.”
    She smiled slightly. “I believe it is
intended to do just so!”
    “ You are much more to my liking without
it.”
    She should have blushed. She should have
scolded him for speaking to her so. Instead, she felt again that
same breathlessness she had experienced when first he had entered
the room. It was a difficult thing to equate the wastrel Julia had
met three days earlier with the man now standing before her. And it
was just as impossible to believe that a man who freely admitted to
engaging in duels and riding roughshod over the laws of the land
was one and the same as the man who had haunted her thoughts from
the moment their paths had crossed.
    She tugged the cap a bit lower over her ears
and said, rather shakily, “I should never have ventured out without
it before, as if I were a young girl not yet out in the world. It
was wrong of me not to have been wearing it when first we met.”
    He frowned. “I suppose you had that from your
friend.”
    Her chin came up. “Yes. Harriet was good
enough to remind me that a widow in my position must observe all
the proprieties.”
    “ In your position? What do you
mean?”
    “ I mean that I intend to re-enter
society and I must, therefore, strive be circumspect in all
things.”
    “ I see. And will you re-enter society
in London, or here, in the village?”
    “ I am afraid London is out of the
question but Harriet has promised that she and her husband shall
conduct me to all the village functions. I shall attend musicales
and assemblies and I shall dance and play cards and delight in
every entertainment put before me!”
    “ So you intend to make up for lost
time, do you?”
    “ Indeed, I do!”
    “ And catch the eye of some eligible
bachelor?”
    “ As many bachelors as possible!” she
answered, smiling.
    His dark brows came together. “Is that your
plan, then, Julia? To marry again?”
    She was suddenly unable to meet his eyes, and
she made a great show of smoothing the wrinkles from the gown as it
hung over her arm. “Yes. Yes, it