A Gentleman Never Tells by Eloisa James

Author:Eloisa James
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2016-06-27T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

LIZZIE LAY AWAKE a long time that night, staring at the ceiling. Oliver Berwick had flirted with her. No man had ever flirted with her before this evening, but she had no trouble recognizing it.

What’s more, she was fairly certain that he meant to seduce her. For one thing, he told her that he meant to.

And for another, he compared her to a peach.

She spent a certain amount of time feeling happily peachlike. Still, she truly didn’t want to be in Oliver’s fruit basket, even if he had laughed at her joke about babies and plums.

Hopefully, he wouldn’t repeat her comment to her sister, because Cat might take offense at the idea that her baby boys had resembled plums.

They looked better now, of course. At four and five, her nephews had fairly intelligent faces, and asked interesting questions. Yesterday she’d had a long conversation with the future Lord Windingham about whether people would recognize each other in heaven.

“Mama said that your husband died,” he had said, in that straightforward way that children had. “But you won’t die for years. When you get up there, you’ll probably have white hair and a cane and all that sort of thing. How will he possibly know who you are?”

“It’s quite possible that Lord Troutt won’t recognize me,” she had said, feeling quite happy about that prospect.

“But I want Mama to know who I am!” His bottom lip began wobbling.

“Your mother will always recognize you, because she’s your mother. And you will recognize her.”

“That’s true,” he had said, looking relieved. “Do you think there is an ant heaven, and do you think that mother ants recognize their babies? And what about the bad place?”

Lizzie had frowned, so he had said a bit impatiently, “The place you go if you don’t go to heaven. Do you think when ants get into the butter, the way they did yesterday, they go to a bad place?”

Lizzie may not have liked Adrian very much, but she didn’t want him to be in a bad place, so she said a hasty prayer for his soul.

Now, in bed, she started wondering how she felt about endangering her own soul by allowing herself to be seduced.

She finally decided that she wasn’t too worried about heaven. She had attended church regularly with her mother, and thereafter with Adrian’s mother. Left to her own devices, she would rather not listen to yet another man dictate what kind of woman she was supposed to be, no matter whether he was wearing black robes or no.

That didn’t mean that she was ready to embark on an affaire that would turn her into Shady Sadie, either.

In fact, the more she thought about it, the more dubious the idea seemed to be. For one thing, Mr. Berwick had told her that he wasn’t enjoying female company because he had an impressionable young niece.

Yet he immediately tried to seduce her in the drawing room, with two young girls not far away. Either he was fibbing about not having a mistress, or he was recklessly imprudent.

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