A Lady's Guide to Ruin by Kathleen Kimmel Page A

laugh. “I should very much enjoy being your companion,” she said.
    â€œSuch luck that you are, then. We shall do oh so many things together. Sit and read. Sit and sew. Sometimes, sit and talk. Perhaps we might even take a respite and merely—”
    â€œSit?” Joan asked, sweet as honey. “It is summertime and we are to be on a grand estate, are we not? Will there not be guests? Riding? Archery?”
    â€œHave you not heard that the slightest exertion tires me terribly? My brother is quite strict about the number of stairs I may climb and the amount of sun I may risk onmy pale skin.” Frustration blistered under Elinor’s light tone.
    â€œYou have a fine complexion,” Joan said.
    â€œNo better than yours.”
    Joan looked down at her arms. She had once been pleasantly golden from the sun. Not fashionable, perhaps, but it made her feel as if she were drinking the sky itself into her skin. All the color had faded; sallow hints of yellow had replaced the gold. “I am hale and you are ill, yet your skin is the pleasant cream of a proper lady, and mine has more the look of a malarial victim,” she said.
    â€œHave you met many malarial victims? I have not, but I would venture to guess you are significantly more fetching than the majority.”
    â€œYou are more educated than I; I had not realized that the disease seeks out the homely to infect,” Joan said. This provoked a chuckle, which soothed the sudden prickling of sweat at the nape of her neck. Entertaining Elinor was one thing; challenging her was another. She would have to tread carefully if she wished to intrigue Elinor without completely contradicting the fragility that had initially ensnared Martin.
    She did not wish to contemplate the squirm in her belly at the thought of
ensnaring
Martin Hargrove.
Lord Fenbrook
, she reminded herself, more forcefully this time. Not her cousin, and certainly not a prospect—even for a temporary arrangement—for the daughter of a failed actor and middling criminal, leaving aside her own subsequent forays into the criminal realm. Leaving aside that she had determined long ago to remain a virgin and had expended a considerable amount of effort and stubbornness to do so.
    She might not even have bothered. Few of her friendswere virgins, and more than a few made their living proving it, after all. But desire had never been worth the risk of getting herself with child. Still, virtue could not possibly be hers to claim after the number of almosts her work had necessitated.
    Well. Not all of those almosts had been necessary. There was the duke’s nephew with the full lips and the wounded gaze and the lithe body that had trapped her against the wall; the trap had two means of escape, and it had been with no small amount of disappointment that she had declined the more pleasurable of them and had opted for refusal instead. That interlude had provided distraction many a night since, but now when she thought of it, it was Martin’s arms around her, his knee against her thigh, his lips at her neck . . .
    She shook her head. She really was helpless. If Martin felt a measure of her attraction to him, if he was willing to breach propriety for an evening’s entertainment with his cousin, she had misjudged him. No, that was a man who would only bed a woman he meant to marry and that was a ludicrous proposition.
    â€œDon’t keep your thoughts to yourself,” Elinor said. “There is enough sitting in silence to come, without starting now.”
    â€œI don’t think you would approve of these particular thoughts,” Joan said.
    â€œHmm.” Elinor tapped her finger on her leg, head tilted. “I shall have to ferret them out. But not yet. Listen.”
    The rise and fall of the city hubbub had abated. Outside the carriage was a thick sort of quiet—not empty, but full of steady, soothing sounds. Not of the crash and flurry of city noise.