Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 86167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Mysterious, unpredictable Lisbet, married to a proper marquess. He couldn’t help but think Fortenbury wouldn’t know what to do with her.
You don’t know what to do with her either, he reminded himself. He had to guard himself against her charms, because it wouldn’t be appropriate to pursue a deeper relationship with someone who thought of him as a doting older brother.
She’s not your sister, chap. Not least when you’ve got her over your lap, and your cock stirring despite your best intentions…
He refocused on his piano music, a dense, tempestuous Beethoven composition known as “La Passionata.” Churning through the challenging piece dispelled some of his pent-up energy, his passion, which lately had nowhere to go.
He ought to return to London. Try again with his mistress or end the arrangement. Look for a wife within the ton? Perhaps. Someday. He still had feelings for Felicity, his first and greatest love, but practicalities loomed. He was an oldest son, heir to the Barrymore marquessate, and grown now past the ripe age of thirty. He must discover a worthwhile marriage candidate soon and court her to the altar.
Meanwhile, his errant piano pupil wished him to go to Wales for her wedding. Perhaps he would, though he ought to stay away on principle, because of their spanking antics. Really, it was not well done of him to accommodate her requests for punishment. He must put a stop to it soon. He must court a proper woman and marry her. If Elizabeth could settle down with Fortenbury like a responsible duke’s daughter, he could settle down with some ingenue of the town, or perhaps some young widow who was willing to overlook the more salacious gossip about his perverse proclivities.
Soon. Eventually. What else was there to do?
*
Elizabeth traversed Arlington Hall’s echoing stairwells on a quest to find her papa. He wasn’t in any of the downstairs parlors, nor in his chambers. She didn’t believe he’d ridden out, for the stable yard was quiet. That left his study, or the library. She hesitated to bother him at work, but he was not the sort of papa to get angry at interruptions.
She passed through the East Salon, murmuring a quiet greeting to her many forebears in their portraits. There were paintings of her parents too, who frequently had their likeness made, smiling together in marital bliss. Since her youngest years, she’d admired those portraits and wished to be wedded and happy, too. There was a stern portrait of her papa in the gallery, decked out in his ducal regalia, his sashes and medals and golden coronet. She was counting on that imposing side of her father to convince Lord Augustine to travel with them to Wales in a few weeks.
Of course, August should make his own choice, but if she had the means to massage his decision to her liking, she would. He ought not to stay back, lonely and tragic, while the Oxfordshire friends and families gathered to celebrate her wedding. Elizabeth felt he had pined for Felicity long enough, and imagined Wales might free him from this sadness by providing some novel marriage prospect to tempt his heart.
He knew all the London girls and hadn’t proposed to any of them; perhaps that was because he was fated to fall for a Welsh lady. Elizabeth had intuitions all the time, and this was one of them: that Lord Augustine must go to Wales, that he would meet his true love there. That this Welsh maiden, finally, would break his heart’s tie to Felicity and free him to love elsewhere.
But sometimes intuitions needed interventions to come to pass. A little meddling, just the right amount, and that was where her papa would come in.
He was not in the library, but she sensed he’d been there recently. She walked beyond the tall shelves of leather-bound books and comfy chairs into her papa’s private study, where the faint scent of his cologne confirmed she was close on his trail. She glanced at the papers on his desk, the ledgers and accounts he pored over when they were in the country.
Her papa managed many business interests, as well as political interests for king and country. She used to watch him work as a child, and he’d let her look at anything she wished, even let her sit on his lap and read official papers, helping her puzzle out what they meant.
It had been a while since she’d sat in his lap, but her curiosity was sharp as ever. She ran her fingers over a listing of rents, and his largest tenants’ livestock holdings which seemed a thriving success. There was some correspondence from sundry aristocrats, still sealed. Invitations to house parties, meetings, or social gatherings, perhaps. She saw a printed drawing peeking from beneath the stack of unopened letters and pushed them aside to look closer.