How to Undress a Marquess by Lauren Royal

Author:Lauren Royal
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781938907012
Publisher: Novelty Publishers LLC dba Novelty Books

FORTY-FOUR

“I DON’T believe it,” Caithren said later when they’d stopped at the Lion in Buckden for dinner.

Jason spooned soup into his mouth, following it with a gigantic bite of bread. “But you believe in ghosts.”

“What do ghosts have to do with it?”

He rolled the dice and took two markers off the backgammon board they’d set on the table between them. “Why should you believe in ghosts but not fortune-telling?”

“Dukkering,” she corrected crossly. “They say what you want to hear.” She poked at her Dutch pudding, using her spoon to flake off bits of the minced beef. “Or rather, what they think you want to hear. But the Gypsy woman misjudged me.”

His compelling eyes looked speculative over the rim of his tankard. “Did she, now?”

“Aye.” Avoiding his gaze, she tossed the dice and made her move. “I don’t intend to have children at all, let alone four.”

He stuck the dice back in their cup and rattled it, his gaze straying to the window beside them. “Do you not like children?”

“I like them fine. It’s the necessary husband I’d as soon do without.”

He set down the dice cup, raising a brow. “So much for the happy marriage she predicted.”

“Are you going to take your turn?”

Slowly he reached across the small table and traced a fingertip across the back of her hand. A shiver ran through her. “But are you not sensitive to physical touch?” he drawled in a voice low and lazy.

She was sensitive, all right. It took everything she had not to leap across the table and kiss him. Struggling for control, she forced herself to remember last night. “Why today should you want to touch me?”

“Perhaps I’ve had a change of heart.” He chucked her under the chin. “Like you will when your precious amulet changes hands.”

She took the dice cup and firmly wrapped his fingers back around it. “The amulet will not change hands. The Gypsy was wrong.”

Even with the noises of conversations and dishes rattling around them, the dice sounded loud as Jason shook them and spilled them onto the leather board. Two more of his pieces made their way into his haphazard pile. “Someday—”

“Nay. I won’t ever take it off.” She bit her lip, then decided to come out with it. The terrible words she’d thought to herself but never said aloud. “My mother took it off only once. To wear a pretty necklace my father had just brought her from Edinburgh. She died that day. Broke her neck when she was thrown from her horse.”

“You blame your father for her death,” Jason said flatly.

“I don’t.” She shook her head. “I never have.”

He was silent for a minute, watching her drop the dice back into the cup, slowly, one by one. “You blame her,” he finally said.

“Nay.” Maybe she’d thought it, but she didn’t believe it. “Though I won’t tempt fate by making the same mistake.”

“It’s naught but metal and stone,” he said gently.

“It’s more than metal and stone,” she disagreed. “It’s been in my family for centuries.

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