Read What an Earl Wants for Free Online

portico
as she retied her bonnet and pulled on her gloves, realizing that the coach was
now slowly circling the square, so that the horses should not be forced to stand
while she was inside.
    Well, that presented a problem, didn’t it? Not to mention
putting quite the crimp in her grand exit. She wasn’t about to go running after
it, crying yoo-hoo, waving it down. Besides, she’d
had just about enough of his lordship’s courtesy for
one morning. She had two feet, and she knew how to use them.
    She looked to her left, and then to her right. Two feet, yes.
Now if only she knew what direction in which to point them....
    “Ma’am?”
    Jessica turned about slowly, to see that the footman had opened
the door behind her, probably to warn her to take herself off, as loitering on
his lordship’s doorstep was not allowed.
    “I’m going,” she said tightly. “You don’t have to apply the
boot.”
    “Oh, but, ma’am, you’re to come inside. Please.”
    She whirled about in her anger, skewering the footman with a
look meant to set him back a step, which it did. “I am, am I? You’d be wrong
there. I don’t have to go anywhere. That might be something you could tell his
lordship. I’m not his to command.”
    “No, ma’am. That is to say, ma’am, it was me what thought to
put you in the...that is to say, his lordship is awaiting your pleasure in the
drawing room. Ma’am?”
    All the anger in Jessica drained away. The footman had made a
valid assumption. She wasn’t dressed in the first stare, Lord knew. She’d
arrived unaccompanied. What else was the man to think but that she’d been
summoned, perhaps to interview for some domestic position? Ha! If the earl were
to do the interviewing, a position woulddefinitely be involved!
    “Very well.” She reentered the mansion, feeling slightly
abashed, which was enough to bring back her anger. She’d no idea she was so
prickly; she’d always believed herself to be a pleasant person at the heart of
the thing. “What is your name?” she asked the footman kindly as, yet again, she
handed over her belongings.
    “Waters, ma’am,” the youth said, bowing as he laid her pelisse
over his arm. “I’ll be taking you upstairs now and turning you over to, that is
to say, where Mr. Thorndyke will announce you to his lordship. And thank you
again, ma’am.”
    “You did as you were trained, I’m sure,” Jessica told him,
handing over a coin. “The error was mine. Was his lordship that rough on
you?”
    Waters bowed again, not quite fast enough to hide his relieved
smile. “His lordship could blister paint with that tongue of his, ma’am. But not
on me, ma’am. Not this time. It was Mr. Thorndyke what explained how I was
wrong. He’s not half bad.”
    Jessica shot a look up the staircase, to where she could see a
tall, gray-haired man, most probably Thorndyke, waiting for her. She was being
passed along to the Upper Reaches. How fortunate she was.
    “Really? In other words, Waters, he’ll be escorting me into the
lion’s den. Lucky for me, then, I’m no lamb.”
    “Ma’am?” the footman all but squeaked, looking nervous once
more.
    “I’ll make my own way up the stairs,” she told him. “Just don’t
put my things too far away, as I might be needing them again quite shortly.”
    So saying, she lifted her hem a fraction and her chin a
fraction more before heading up the staircase, her gaze already locked with that
of the butler, or majordomo, or whatever the man considered himself, and by the
look of him he considered himself at least two social levels above that of his
lordship’s visitor.
    And all for the lack of a maid, or a maiden aunt, or some paid
companion. Really, society was a set of ridiculous rules. She was well out of
it. Were she a man, none of this would apply, and she’d already be sitting in
the drawing room with one leg draped over the other, sipping wine instead of the
tea she’d be offered, if she was offered anything at all.
    And from the