A Viscount is a Girl's Best Friend by Gemma Blackwood

Author:Gemma Blackwood
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2020-01-06T16:00:00+00:00

Hours later, half-drunk on kisses, drowsy from the day’s journey and yet unable to rest, Nathaniel lay on the bed, his shirt unbuttoned and his hair askew, one hand resting lightly on Edith’s waist as she lay beside him.

Their eyes exchanged messages their mouths were not ready to speak aloud. On Nathaniel’s part, restraint was chief amongst them.

They could no longer pretend to be merely friends, but that did not mean he had abandoned all sense. Edith’s fantasies of a life free from social expectation suffered from the same basic problem as her dreams too often did: an unshakeable optimism that he both envied and decried. She could see only freedom at the end of the path they had embarked on, unwed and unpromised, but he was all too aware of the pain that would accompany it.

“We ought to sleep,” he said, watching the flame flicker in the remnants of the candle. “We’ll be off at dawn.”

“Is that what you want?” Edith’s hand made a slow journey up his arm, stopping along the way to let her fingers explore the muscles he had hardened with hours in the boxing ring. He caught her hand and pressed it to his lips.

“If I asked you to marry me, you’d say no.”

She looked away. “You make it sound as though I’d break your heart.”

“It’s you I’m worried about.”

“Why?” Her eyes found his again, alight with defiance. “I always wanted a great romance. I never wanted to be a wife. My reputation won’t mean a thing when I’m sailing a felucca down the Nile. You know I’d make a poor viscountess.”

“I don’t think anything of the sort.”

“Then you haven’t been paying attention. You want to be a statesman, Nathaniel. A lord worthy of the title. You need a wife to match.”

“I do want those things,” he admitted. He would have been a fool to try to deny it. “But I am not the man I wish to be. Not yet, and perhaps not ever.”

Edith’s fingers wound around his. “Your uncle is too strict. Any other guardian would have released your fortune long ago.”

“Would they?” Nathaniel rolled onto his back, frowning at the whitewashed ceiling. Edith’s fingers remained intertwined with his, now pressed to his chest. “I have made some poor decisions, heaven knows. If it weren’t for your new brother, the Earl of Streatham, I’d have been caught up in that illegal gaming business last autumn.”

“But you were wise enough to take his advice, and you escaped. No one expects you to be perfect, Nathaniel.”

He shut his eyes. “I let Lord Sheldon and Sir Terence convince me to waste five hundred pounds on a racehorse.”

“Plenty of gentlemen lose money at the races.”

“And I thought I was cleverer than all of them. Shelly gave me such assurances… And when Adolphus called me up on it, I thought, I’ll show that old fool. I’ll teach him that I’m man enough to manage my own affairs.” He let out a bitter laugh. “How he must be crowing

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