My Fair Lily(49)

His fingers tightened on Hades’ reins. “Lass, you’re swelling my head with such compliments.”

She let out another merry laugh. “Don’t be angry. I have given your situation serious thought. You won’t get anywhere with your cousins unless they think of you as their equal. Having been raised as Sassenachs, and therefore shallow, they will not be persuaded unless you become one of their ilk. To do that, you must fit in with the upper crust. Can you dance?”

He thought about the last clan gathering that dissolved into little better than a drunken brawl. All because of that large-breasted wench... Lord, how was he to know that she was married? “Highland reels. Nothing you would deem proper.”

“Um, I see.”

He certainly hoped she didn’t. Lily was too innocent to understand about such things as lust or casual desire. Lily was a deep, abiding love sort of girl. He hoped she wasn’t in love with that self-absorbed wanker Ashton.

“And you can’t read very well, but that’s not your fault. Indeed, you seem to have as much sense as most highly educated men I know. Certainly more sense than most of the men in my family,” she muttered more to herself than to him.

“Lily, I can read.”

“Not well enough to pass as an educated man.” She cast him another one of those sympathetic glances that only served to rankle him. “But as I said, no one faults you for—”

“Lass, you’re wrong.” He took the reins of her little mare and turned her about.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking you back to Eloise’s. She has an excellent library.”

“Yes, but—”

“Pick out whatever book you like.” He didn’t know why her good opinion was so important to him. It just was.

They rode in silence to Chipping Way, and when they reached the Dayne townhouse, he handed their reins to Eloise’s stable boy and started for the house. Watling met them at the door. “Good day, Lord Carnach.”

However, when he attempted to lead them into the salon, Ewan stopped him. “Library first.”

If Watling seemed confused, he didn’t show it. “As you wish, my lord. Shall I take Jasper? I think he’ll be more comfortable in the garden. No tables or delicate teacups for him to knock over out there.”

Ewan grinned. “Aye, good idea.”

Once alone with Lily, Ewan took her hand and led her to the well-stocked bookshelves. “Ewan, you don’t have to do this.”

He turned away abruptly, grabbed a particularly dense-looking text, and selected a page at random. He began to read aloud. In Latin. He then translated the words.

She leaped to his side. “Let me see that.”

“Well?”

“I don’t understand. That first day, when you fished the MacLaurin book out of the puddle, you had such trouble sounding out the words.”

“The title was smudged. I couldn’t make it out. That’s all.”

“Um... I see,” she said again, her brow furrowing in an adorably puzzled expression. “I’m so glad. It makes my job that much easier.”

“Lass, let me make one thing clear to you. You’re not going to turn me into a perfume-drenched society dandy.”

“Ewan, let me make one thing clear to you. Perfume aside, I am going to do it. I must. You need to be accepted into society. Your very life depends upon it.”

***

Ewan was glowering at her again.

Lily didn’t mind. At least he wasn’t storming out of here with rifle in hand, ready to meet his doom at the hands of his cagey cousin, who deemed him a threat to his inheritance and would kill him at first sight. Desmond was scared of him, and men who were scared took desperate actions, those actions encouraged by Despicable Grandfather. The old rotter was treating his grandchildren like pawns on a chessboard. Ewan had to convince his cousins that they had to unite to defeat him. “We’ll start tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I hear the ladies returning from their ride. Are we done here? Good. I think I’ll join them.”

She started past him, her head held high and fingers crossed that he wouldn’t see through her bluster and bravado. He reached around her and shut the library door, pinning her against it as he set his hands on each side of the door and leaned in close so that their noses... and lips... were almost touching. Oh, crumpets. Speaking of noses, she inhaled his scent as she took a deep breath. He smelled nice. Horse and leather and pine trees nice.

“You think I’m a man in need of civilizing?”

She let out a small eep. “Yes, a little. Only a little. On the more trivial subjects such as fashion, etiquette, and dance. Not the important ones. You seem to have mastered those. You’re awfully close, Ewan.”