Never Fall for Your Fiancee

“Please tell me you never showed any of these to your mother.”

“Not directly … Although I confess, I left one or two of them lying around in my bedchamber. In case my mother was curious. Which I am pretty sure she was. On occasion.” He grinned and patted her hand in reassurance. Thankfully, his touch didn’t send her pulse rocketing as it had last night. It quickened slightly, but not in an alarming way. “Not all of the letters rhyme and not all of the poems are as dreadful as that one. I never would have left that monstrosity lying around. Just skim this pile to get the gist and then you never need sully your eyes with it again.”

She placed the bundle on top of the weighty tome on lung diseases and concentrated on his face, something that was much easier than digesting his epic fairy tale. He did have such a compellingly handsome face.

Excellently proportioned features. Those twinkling blue eyes … Focus on the forty pounds and not his obvious enticements! Enticements that had distracted her far too much since their odd moment last night when, doubtless overwhelmed, overtired, and overawed, one simple touch from his hand had rendered her speechless. And perhaps a tad off-kilter—because surely an innocuous touch shouldn’t be that profound? But after a stiff internal talking-to that allowed her to rationalize the odd moment and dismiss it for what it was, she went to bed on a much more even keel. Only nerves about the task ahead had stopped her from sleeping soundly—not thoughts of him. Curiosity about the house rather than the host had sent her exploring, not realizing her host was an early bird, too—something that surprised her given his reputation. But now, rested, calmer, and more herself, his proximity wasn’t having such an extraordinary effect. Minerva could blithely admire his handsome face while still being in full possession of her wits. “You arrived back in January?”

“Yes. Late January. Obviously, while I was away you were convalescing.”

“Obviously. Then what happened?”

“I had barely been back a few days when my mother suddenly wrote to me suggesting a June wedding. She must have written the damn thing the second she waved me off on the dock, and she declared she was on the cusp of booking her passage.”

“Oh dear. Why do I sense another setback?” All these lies, all this effort, must come from a very shallow, selfish place, yet despite having no sympathy for the predicament he had got himself into, she couldn’t help but like him.

Hugh had no concept of what the real world was like, no concept of the sorts of problems real people had to deal with on a daily basis. For him, everything could be solved with money—which he clearly had no true understanding of the value of either. It wasn’t his fault, any more than being poor was hers, but in her world he wouldn’t last five minutes. That she had lasted several hours in his was testament to her superior strength of character. He smiled again, which made his eyes dance much too charmingly, and she found herself smiling back. Because he was, despite all his shortcomings—which she needed to keep reminding herself of—eminently personable in a scoundrelly sort of way. “Already you know me so well.”

“What did you do, Hugh?”

“Your father died while I was still on the ship, and any prospect of a summer wedding died with him. There was the obligatory period of mourning to consider…”

“Which coincidentally ends shortly after Christmas. Clearly your mother isn’t stupid.” Something that didn’t bode well for Hugh’s plan. In many ways, if she really couldn’t cope after a week of these lessons, Minerva would be doing him a favor by terminating the charade before his mother arrived to save him from his own folly.

Or perhaps she should see it through till the bitter end, watch it all fail catastrophically and pat herself on the back when he finally learned a proper lesson about life. In which case, it would be a nobly earned forty pounds.

“She is not known for her patience.”

“I suspect she has the patience of a saint to put up with you. Were you always this challenging?”

“Don’t you dare hold her up as a candidate for sainthood. The woman is a menace, and believe me, I was driven to it.” He sighed for effect, pretending to be vastly put upon, then spoiled it with another smile that sent her pulse galloping. There was something disarming about a man who was keenly aware of all of his shortcomings—yet made no apology for them. “And before you say it yet again—yes, I do know this is all nonsense. And no, I don’t fancy my odds at this working.”

“You don’t?”

He shook his golden head with resignation. “Giles has it at three to one against. But what can I say? I’m an eternal optimist. It has to be worth a try … and already I am heartened you are such a fast learner.”

“I’ve always had a talent for digesting information quickly and retaining it. It’s the more physical accomplishments, rather than the temporal, which are beyond me. I am dreadfully uncoordinated and clumsy.”