Read Not Wicked Enough for Free Online

was, she had no interest in a boy. “Welcome to Bitterward.”
     
    “Thank you, Lord Nigel.” She smiled faintly. For good or ill, she was much more interested in the Duke of Mountjoy.
     

Chapter Four
     

     
    N EAR MIDNIGHT, MOUNTJOY LEFT THE STABLES AND headed for the rear entrance that led to his room. He hadn’t intended to be gone for so long. He owed his sister an apology for his absence. Eugenia had particularly asked him if he could come home for supper this evening, and he had agreed he would. He ought to have been, given that in the week since their guest’s arrival, he’d managed to dine at Bitterward exactly once.
    The most direct way to the private entrance took him through the rose garden, a familiar walk now. There was a full moon, and that meant he did not need a lantern to light his way. Finely crushed gravel crunched under his boots as he walked. Once, Bitterward had been a foreign place to him, cold and demanding of his time and attention. Over the years, he’d come to see his legacy as a living thing. He had been required to learn its secrets and shepherd the lands, tenants, staff, and a thousand other dependencies. In return, the estate gave him shelter, food on his table, ready money in his pockets and his brother and sister an income. Properlymanaged, Bitterward would support his wife, children, and future generations of Hamptons who would one day gaze at his portrait in the gallery hall.
     
    Halfway to the house, he stopped. A woman limned in silver moved with silent grace onto the path ahead of him. Her back was to him, and damned if he didn’t wonder if the apparition was entirely of this world. Then she turned her head toward the roses along the path, and he recognized her.
     
    “Miss Wellstone?”
     
    She let out a soft gasp and whirled, a hand to her heart. Moonlight scattered soft prisms of light from the combs in her hair. “Your grace.”
     
    He walked to her and, God help him, he was on point, far too aware of her as a woman. He schooled himself against the reaction. “Were you perhaps expecting the gardener?”
     
    Too late, he understood the insult he’d just leveled at her. They spoke at the same time, Miss Wellstone with more than a hint of frost in her tone.
     
    “I was not expecting anyone, your grace.”
     
    “Forgive me, Miss Wellstone. That was thoughtless of me.”
     
    “It was.” Her pale shawl had slipped into the crooks of her elbows, leaving her shoulders and bosom exposed and all the rest of her indefinably luscious in full evening dress.
     
    “I only meant to remark your unexpected appearance out here.” He, on the other hand, wore the same clothes he’d put on this morning. While he rarely gave a thought to his appearance, Miss Wellstone made him wonder if he ought to care more. He removed his hat and held it by the brim then thought what his hair must look like. He smoothed a hand over the top of his head. “I intended no insult.”
     
    “We hardly know each other, yet here I am giving you my forgiveness again.”
     
    Her eyes, Mountjoy thought, gave away the mind behind those innocent, delicate features. Again too late, he realizedhe was staring and that his silence could be construed as rude. He opened his mouth to speak, too late, of course.
     
    “Twice in an acquaintance seems excessive, don’t you think?”
     
    “For a man who is little more than a country oaf? Hardly.” Ahead of him the path led to the house. To his right, a narrower walkway lay half in shadow from the roses in full bloom. And in front of him, a vision that made him think of sex and the silk of a woman’s form.
     
    “Ridiculous, your grace,” she said. Her smile was gentle and inviting and not at all as cold as he deserved from her. “You’re no oaf.”
     
    “Am I to be forgiven?”
     
    She plucked at her shawl until the two sides were even, then gave him a look from beneath her lashes. “I suppose.”
     
    “You are all that is generous, Miss