Chapter 3 #2
Miss Candile was everything he hated about socializing in Linzen rolled into one deceptively dainty package and wrapped in chiffon.
In the half a day she had been at Marstede, she had already objected to the room provided to her, demanded specific luxuries impossible to acquire at short notice so far from the city, and mentioned her grandfather, the Duke of Kinseran, no less than three times in Nicholas’s hearing.
One of the other women, who had been comfortably bland on her own, turned into a ninny around Miss Candile. The others were too unassuming to challenge her or provide any balance.
In short, Nicholas had spent a few hours with the women so far and already wanted to cast a ward over his entire estate, locking out anyone female. His mother included.
He might have thought one woman as bad as a dozen back when he made the agreement, but he’d learned his mistake. Depending on who the one woman was, she could be infinitely worse than a hundred others. He did not want to take the chance and discover that this woman was another like Miss Candile.
She certainly wasn’t bland, like the rest.
“Go home,” Nicholas repeated. He should have slammed the door in her face, but arguing with her was a relief after the stilted politeness and forced smiles of the rest of the day. A far better palliative than the cup of tea he had planned to make when he came into the kitchen.
Her eyes sparked with fire, but before she could answer, the person who had entered the kitchen made her way to the door.
His mother pulled it open wider. “Nicholas, what are you doing standing in the doorway like that?”
She spotted the woman standing outside and trailed off.
He turned to face his mother. “You said five, Mother. Five women are already here, so this one is out of luck.”
“I never said five.” Madeleine Huxley would never lower herself to crossing her arms and glaring, but the tilt of her head was nearly as bad. Nicholas knew that tilt. “The agreement was fewer than half a dozen.”
“Half a dozen is six,” he grumbled. “Therefore, fewer would be five.”
His mother’s nose went in the air with an imperious sniff. “No one says half a dozen when they mean five, whether they say fewer or not. Now let the poor dear inside. You promised to cooperate.”
The woman made no pretense of not being enthralled by this argument. Nicholas didn’t care. Better to be a spectacle than to give in. “This morning you promised I only had to put up with five women.”
“Half a dozen.”
The sixth guest his mother had invited suddenly looked thoughtful. “Are any of the women missing an arm or a leg? Not that I think losing a limb makes you less of a person, but if we are arguing technicalities, it ought to count as making the total less than half a dozen.”
Nicholas spun back to face her. “Are you volunteering to lose a limb in order to stay?”
Rather than running away, she raised a brow. “For all you know, I’m missing a leg already. It’s not like you can see under my skirts. In fact, all your guests might be missing legs. Have you checked?”
He looked down at her skirts, her crinoline wide enough that it was impossible to say what existed beneath. “If you are hoping I’ll demand you lift your skirts so you can later cry that I compromised you, I warn you now that such a ploy won’t make me marry you.”
“Nicholas!”
His mother’s voice, in that tone, was enough to halt the images racing through his mind of trapping this woman against the wall and slowly lifting her skirts to admire the shapely legs hidden beneath.
What was wrong with him?
Desperate to escape the unwanted thoughts, he pointed at the woman. “She’s the one who suggested lifting everyone’s skirts!”
“I did not,” she huffed. Nicholas’s thoughts instantly returned to impolite scenarios. She continued talking, which didn’t help. “I merely pointed out that you don’t know what is beneath them.”
Given that she was talking about all of his guests, Nicholas figured he should have images flashing through his mind of each woman, her skirts raised.
Everyone his mother had invited was attractive in her own way (Miss Candile's being a purely physical beauty that wasn’t nearly enough to make up for her personality), yet he didn’t entertain thoughts of any of them for even a moment.
Only the woman who stood in front of him.
This woman who was exactly what he didn’t want—opinionated, outspoken, and unlikely to leave him in peace.
The last thing Nicholas needed was for his mother to catch on that he was attracted to any of her guests. She’d see that as a sign that she was right. But attraction was not what made for a comfortable marriage.
Nicholas could stand in the doorway, arguing until midnight, but every second he remained he risked his very observant mother catching him glancing at this woman’s lips, the slope of her neck, the lush swell of her bosom.
He knew full well he’d never win the argument, either. Not when he had to let the woman in, at least for the night. It was too late to actually send her home. And once she was in the door, she wouldn’t be leaving until the month was up.
So, he did the only thing he could. Turning on his heel without saying another word, Nicholas left the kitchen. He fled to his study, where he could barricade away the world with a ward and had a full decanter of brandy.
Tea wasn’t going to cut it. Not tonight.