Chapter Four
Marlowe
“Are you trying to tell me that you’re courting Lady Millie?” Mace’s wavy, brown hair falling over his eye, he asked Marlowe the next morning as they stood just off the front steps waiting for the group to go on a short ramble.
“Yes. I believe those were my exact words, Mace.”
“Lady Millie?” Mace made a gesture with his hands acting like a book opening and closing in front of his face.
“Yes.” Marlowe huffed while tugging hard on his coat sleeves. “What’s so hard to believe about that?” Being a rake with no previously vocalized plans to settle down, he knew what was so hard to believe about it, but something provoked within him wanted someone to say the words.
“Ninety percent of the time she’s got her head in a book that may as well be the clouds—”
“She’s a lovely little lady.” Marlowe interrupted his friend, but he didn’t quite finish before the very lovely little lady in question walked down the front steps and approached his side without so much as a passing glance at him.
“You really must stop with the nonsensical compliments, Your Grace,” she said rather dismissively for one bluestocking addressing a duke she hardly knew, all while he stood in front of his friend.
“It’s quite sensical, Millie.”
“If you’ve going to wax poetic about me, at least lavish praise on a believable attribute.”
“Millie—”
But she had already brushed past him, only to throw a glare over her shoulder. Her cousins Dolly and Goldie had shown up, along with the rest of the guests.
The walk that he’d been waiting for was starting without him.
“I suppose I can see it.” Mace elbowed him in the ribs.
Just then, Orlan appeared at his side. The sandy-haired man nudged his other side. “What can you see?”
“Marlowe and Lady Millie making a go of it,” Mace explained.
“A go of what?”
“Marriage.”
Orlan spluttered before finding function in his lips again.
“You and Lady Millie?” He pointed to the determined woman marching farther away from him.
Practically leading the pack. Which was ironic since Marlowe found her hiding in a bush last night.
Well, she wasn’t hiding her light in this moment. Perhaps she thrived in nature.
“Marlowe, I asked you a question. My wife’s cousin? She’s too good for you. You do know that Millie is supporting her entire family right now because of her father’s bad debts, don’t you?”
He gave a noncommittal shrug because no, in fact, he did not know. But he should have known, and he didn’t want to let on about his ignorance.
“She’s an impressive woman.” Beyond her love for books, she obviously had some way of being discreetly resourceful, as it was scandalous for a genteel woman to earn her own keep.
“Are you seriously pursuing Lady Millie?” Mace asked.
Seriously.
What a loaded word.
Well…he was in it.
“Yes. I’m courting her. Can’t you tell?”
“No,” his friends answered in unison, but he didn’t care.
All that mattered was that his mother believed it so that she didn’t pair him up with someone else.
Because even though Millie might never have been his first choice, he could see that she would never have been his last choice.
So long as he’d had an opportunity to meet her.
Something about her…
His feet padded down the path.
Captured my attention.
The leaves rustled in the summer breeze overhead.
She has a way about her…
The clouds dragged across the sky.
No woman has ever spoken to me like she did.
A spark resulting from a small tug on his sleeve brought him back to the moment. Orlan and Mace had taken off at some point, and the group now spanned a distance of about a hundred meters.
Looking down at the source of the tug, he caught sight of Millie.
“Yes?”
“Don’t you think you should walk with me?”
“You’re the one who took off.”
She harrumphed. Loudly. Loudly for him to hear but no one else. What impressive ways women had to make their feelings known.
“You’re supposed to be courting me,” she said, taking a book out of her pocket while slipping her other hand in his arm.
“Hard to court a book.” He tapped the spine.
“I’m not going to change who I am simply because we’re in a fake relationship, Marlowe.”
“So this is what you would do if I decided to take you on a walk?”
“Yes.” She flipped a page. “But we’ll never know, will we?”
Odd, but that struck a weird nerve in the vicinity of his heart, thinking that he would never know how she truly behaved around him. It made him feel rather defensive, actually. “I can’t be at your side every moment of every day.”
“You don’t need to be. Just pick your moments.”
“Such as?”
She sighed, and from the way the book dipped, he knew she had something significant on her mind. Knowing women, he waited.
“The other women have already challenged the idea that you’re courting me.”
“Like who?”
“Not that it matters, but Claudette has pointed out our…differences. She really doesn’t believe the lie we’re trying to propagate.”
“On what grounds?”
“On the grounds that none of them have seen us sneaking away together.”
Marlowe snorted. “That’s—”
“Ironic? I know. Considering we have been alone together. It’s beside the point. If no one sees it, then it didn’t happen. What’s more, if no one gossips about it, it didn’t happen. We must give them something to talk about.”
“‘Something to talk about,’ you say?”
“Yes.”
“You know anything to talk about will most probably ruin your reputation and any chance at a future.”
“I’ll bear the consequences,” she said. He looked at her dubiously, but she dismissed it. “it must be gossip-worthy but not scandalous.”
“That’s a bit of a contradiction, isn’t it?”
She looked him up and down. Slowly. “You seem intelligent enough to think of something.”
“Oh, I already have, Bookworm. I already have.”
Something in his tone must have rattled her, for she stutter-stepped and dropped her book.
To retrieve it, he bent down and picked it up. “Is this the same book from last night?”
“Yes.”
“From the way you chided me, I thought it was ruined.”
“It practically was,” she said, snatching the book from his hands. “I had to leave it out all night to dry with the pages carefully propped open.”
“It sounds as though that’s not the first time you’ve had to rescue a book.”
He caught her eye and saw a flicker of emotion pass through, but he couldn’t name it.
“I know my books.” Her voice softened the tiniest degree.
“So you do.” He stood to his full height, noticing for the first time how perfectly she would fit right under his chin. It was a thought he’d never had before, despite being with women varying in height. He was pretty sure he’d been with a woman this height before…but…something about Millie…
“Yes. Well, are you going to tell me this gossip-inducing, scandal-avoiding plan that you have?”
“No. I’d rather just show you.” He propped his arm up. “Shall we?”
The plan that he had was one he’d never concocted before. Certainly one that he’d never been amenable to in the past. But then again, there had never been Millie before, had there?
And what could go wrong by doing something that he’d never done before? A person couldn’t really live that way, could they? Trying new things had to lead to better things. If one always did what one has always done, one would always get what one always got.
It was good to do things differently sometimes. Right?