Never Fall for Your Fiancee
- Автор: Heath Virginia
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: St. Martin's Publishing Group
- Жанр: Исторические любовные романы
Электронная книга - «Never Fall for Your Fiancee». Краткое содержание книги:
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Virginia Heath's fun characters and situations will have you laughing out loud! Don't miss this wonderful read! - Sabrina Jeffries, *New York Times* bestselling author**
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The first in a new historical rom-com series, a handsome earl hires a fake fiancée to keep his matchmaking mother at bay, but hilarity ensues when love threatens to complicate everything.**
Giles had a point. Vee was struggling.
“She’s young. Practically still a child. But if she is anything like her sisters, she’s sharp and she’ll catch up.” Except no matter how well she did during their lessons, the second she had to perform, the poor thing froze and seemed to forget everything.
As if to prove it, Payne’s instructions wafted across the room. “Tilt the bowl thus, Miss Vee.” His white-gloved fingers carefully guided hers on the delicate handle of the bowl and inclined it slightly toward the center of the table. “And using the outer edge of the spoon only, carefully submerge it into the broth just deep enough to fill it.” Clearly enjoying his new role, he watched each of his willing pupils mimic his actions. “That’s it, Miss Diana! Splendid work, Miss Minerva! A little less exuberance, Miss Vee … There is no need to panic. It is only soup.… We’ll get it out of the linen.… Perfection, ladies … Now bring the utensil carefully to the lips and sip from it. Slurping, even quietly, is wholly unacceptable. The sipping of the soup should be a silent affair.”
“Why is it never acceptable to refuse the soup?” Diana had already mastered the mystical art of the soup and was obviously bored—ready to move on and clearly impatient with her younger sibling’s nerves. Whereas Minerva spent far too much time behaving like Vee’s mother. At this rate, they would waste another hour, maybe more, on nonsense. “When we practiced the main course, you said we could pick and choose what we wanted and nobody would judge us. Why is that not the same for the soup course?”
“Who knows? Suffice to say, the soup is sacrosanct. However, if it is not to your liking, then it is acceptable to swish it around with said spoon like so.” Payne delicately wafted the cutlery within the Sèvres bowl with exaggerated airs and graces. “His Lordship, for example, loathes white soup and simply stirs it for the duration of the entire soup course.”
Three similar pairs of green eyes instantly flicked to his across the room, but Hugh’s only wanted to lock with one of them. He didn’t want to think about why that was. Not deeply, at any rate. Just what lay on the surface.
Attraction.
Palpable, visceral, and carnal.
He recognized the signs but would never act on them.
Despite Miss Diana’s half-accurate assassination of his character the other day and despite the mischievous, rebellious side of him that saw her threat as a challenge, she had no concept of the deep seam of nobility that ran straight through him and guided his blasted principles. Nor did Giles. Miss Minerva Merriwell might well be a delicious temptation and be thoroughly delightful company—but she was also here because he had asked her to assist him. Whatever happened with their charade, he would never betray her trust by abusing it. He couldn’t bear to disappoint or hurt her in that way. This was a business arrangement, and he would not be one of the contributing factors that made fate, and life in general, cruel to her.
Those words had haunted him since she had spoken them, and he had felt compelled to reach out and hold her hand before he’d been caught holding it. Hugh had not yet had a single private moment with Minerva to ask her what had prompted them. Whatever had happened, he wanted her brief stay here at Standish House to be a fond memory. In a life he suspected was largely devoid of much joy, she deserved that if nothing else.
Her beautiful emerald eyes were regarding him with amusement. “Is it soup in general you loathe, Hugh, or merely the white soup?”
“Merely the white.” He sighed dramatically, poking his nose in the air like one of the snooty patronesses of Almack’s who always disapproved of him, making the youngest Miss Merriwell giggle. “It tastes of nothing but blandness. But one simply has to serve it.”
“Why?”
“Because white soup is currently de rigueur and therefore expected.”
“And French phrases like de rigueur are also de rigueur,” added Giles for good measure in his trademark bored tone. “And they must be tossed around liberally in all conversations, in order for the speaker to sound suitably au fait with current linguistic fashions. The dullest conversationalists nowadays are nearly always fluent in French.”
At Vee’s widened eyes, Hugh smiled kindly. “Pay him no mind, Miss Vee. He is pulling your leg. You do not need to speak French. Nor do you need to be dull. Simply be your normal charming self, and your dining companions will be enchanted.”
“Isn’t serving food you dislike merely a waste of good food? When a great many of the less fortunate are starving?”
Once again, Diana appeared ready to wade into battle with him. For some inexplicable reason, she was determined to dislike him no matter how much he tried to charm her. However, he had to concede her point, one that gave him uncomfortable pangs of more overprivileged guilt. It was something that plagued him more than ever since he had discovered both fate and life in general had been cruel to Minerva. The rescuer inside him wanted to fix that because she deserved to be happy.
“The servants know only to give me a dribble of the stuff. Out of politeness.” Hugh did his best not to look embarrassed while inwardly vowing to strike the unnecessary extravagance of white soup from the menu henceforth. “Most guests seem to enjoy the white soup. As to wastage—it is something we are very mindful of here at Standish House. Most of the kitchen scraps go to feed the pigs. On the rare occasion the chef has made too much food, for a ball or banquet”—Good grief, that sounded even more privileged!—“the excess is always distributed amongst the tenants or the needy in the parish.” The truth did not make him feel better. Who knew a simple lesson in table etiquette would make him feel so bad about owning the table? “I think the ladies have mastered the soup, Payne. Shall we move on?”
The butler removed Minerva’s bowl first. “Thank you, Payne.”
“And thank you for thanking me, Miss Minerva. However, it is not done to thank the servants during dinner.”
“Whyever not?”
Payne shot Hugh a withering look, pleased she had played into his capably insubordinate hands, then pretended to whisper, making sure his voice carried. “Because our betters like to tell themselves servants are invisible rather than acknowledge the fact that they are simply being rude by ignoring them.”
Hugh took the criticism as he took all of his irascible butler’s criticisms—lightly. Underneath all the bluster, he had a massive soft spot for the wretch and admired his spirit. “Rude is admonishing your betters in front of guests, Payne. In any other household, he would be dismissed on the spot. The fact he has survived, and is paid handsomely despite his rudeness, is testament to my generosity as an employer.”
“The fact he hasn’t dismissed me in the ten years I have had the displeasure of serving him is testament to the amount of nonsense I am privy to—or the poppycock I am expected to miraculously rectify. And I include this debacle in with that nonsense. It’s enough to turn a man to drink. Lying to his mother! For two whole years, no less. His Lordship and I both know I am paid handsomely in case I am tempted to direct my loyalties to better employers elsewhere.” Payne collected the rest of the bowls, then positioned himself back at the head of the table. “Now—to the correct knives and forks again. This is your meat knife and this is your fish knife. Never use the wrong knife, ladies…”
“The only conceivable way I see this mockery of a sham working is if you dispose of the youngest Merriwell.” Giles possessed the enviable talent of whispering without moving his lips. “Can’t you send her somewhere? Home, perhaps?”