The Tutor (House of Lords) by Brooke Meg

Author:Brooke, Meg [Brooke, Meg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-04-20T04:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

When Imogen returned from escorting Cynthia out, she sat down across the table from Charles and glared at him. He pretended to read Hobbes’s Leviathan for a few moments before looking up at her.

“Well?” she demanded.

“Well what?”

“Have you proposed?”

“I have.”

“And?”

“She refused.”

Imogen groaned and glanced back at the door as if she could see Miss Endersby driving away in the carriage. “Then what was she doing here? Why did she accept my invitation?”

Charles turned a page. “Miss Endersby and I have come to an...agreement, of sorts.”

“What agreement?” Charles told her. “Oh, my,” Imogen said when he had finished. “And you expect me to plan a week’s worth of entertainments for you and the girl whose reputation you have not-quite-ruined, so that you may appear to be seriously courting her?”

“I am seriously courting her, Imogen. But yes, I confess that is my hope,” Charles said.

“And I suppose I shall have to attend as well so that it appears we have all accepted her—not that we haven’t, of course. Quite the opposite.”

Charles nodded.

Imogen leaped up from her chair. “Honestly, Charles, I have always looked up to you and admired your intelligence and resourcefulness, but sometimes you can be a colossal idiot.”

“What do you mean?” he asked evenly, enjoying the way her face was growing pinker by the minute. “I thought it was a remarkably clever plan.”

“Yes, of course,” she said, beginning to pace. “I give you credit for one thing: you have bought yourself time. But you have also set yourself a monumental task. You have six days to make her fall in love with you.”

Charles scoffed. “I hardly need her to fall in love with me, Imogen. I just need to make her see that being married to me is better than ruination and despair.” He thought about those words after he said them and realized that he had made it sound as though there were actually a competition between those things.

Imogen seemed to embrace the implied meaning of his words. “A difficult choice, indeed. What do you plan to do if she refuses you at the end of the week?”

Charles had to admit that he hadn’t thought that far ahead.

“Of course not,” Imogen said. She dropped back into the chair she had vacated. “But Charles, do be serious for a moment. If I am to risk my own reputation to help you restore hers, I need to be at least reasonably certain that you will succeed with her. What’s more, I like her, and I wouldn’t want to see her hurt.”

“I shall certainly do my best.”

She sighed. “We must hope that’s good enough, then. Well, I suppose I should go change for dinner.”

After she had gone, Charles sat staring at the pages of Hobbes’s Leviathan. When he had been sitting there at least ten minutes without reading a single word, he gave up and threw the book down on the table.

What had she meant when she had said he wouldn’t believe her if she told him why his being a duke

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