Gentlemen Prefer Mischief by Emily Greenwood Page A

put the top on, and she told herself it didn’t look suspicious, but it was her work in there, and she was afraid something about the shawls would announce her involvement. But he moved past the crate and peeked into the pot where the moss was boiling.
    “And will this be the new color for spring?”
    It did look fairly disgusting. “Perhaps not one of my more successful efforts.”
    He moved on to the carding paddles, which he examined as though they were some intricate foreign object. Probably for a man like him, they were. This hut, these tools—all of this was inconsequential and mundane compared to his world of liveried servants and echoing halls.
    “I’ve never seen these in use,” he said. “It must be fascinating.”
    She gave him a skeptical look.
    “Show me how to use them,” he said.
    “Why? It’s not as if you’ll ever have need.”
    “Because I’m curious.” And he stood there with such an innocent, pleasant look on his face that she didn’t want to refuse him.
    “Very well.” She took the carding tools from him, pulled out a tuft of wool from a nearby barrel, put it on one of the stiff brushes, and dragged the paddles against each other.
    “Ah, I see,” he said. “Ingenious. One feels grateful to one’s ancestors for devising tools that can accomplish such things as the turning of sheep fluff into yarn.”
    “One feels that viscounts are too removed from the small realities of life.”
    His laugh was a deep rumble. “You forget how I’ve toiled in the muck as a soldier.”
    Though his tone was light, there was truth in his words—he would have seen and done things of which she couldn’t conceive. Still, he had been born into a life of silver dishes and velvet cloaks.
    “I can’t think there was so very much muck for the brother of a viscount.”
    “Only the very best muck.”
    But something about his flippant manner niggled her. She cocked her head. “Was the army—the war—what you expected?”
    Her question had evidently surprised him; he looked a bit off-kilter, which pleased her. “Was it what I expected?”
    “Yes, when you bought your commission—I suppose you must have been twenty-two or so?”
    “Twenty-three, and why do you ask?”
    “I just… I imagine it must be such a different life, especially for the son of a viscount.”
    “It’s not that different in some ways. I had servants, good horses.”
    “Do you miss it?” she said.
    “Pardon?”
    “I was just wondering whether it was hard to exchange soldiering for viscounting.”
    “It’s far safer being a viscount.”
    “That wasn’t what I asked. I asked if it was hard, exchanging one life for another.”
    “Only a fool would prefer being shot at to running an estate.”
    “Or someone who needs to be thrilled frequently. I remember you at twenty, making your own fireworks and setting part of Mr. Lovett’s fence on fire. But I suppose such exploits weren’t half so thrilling as almost getting court-martialed.”
    His eyelids lowered in a lazy, dangerous way. “You seem interested in my serenading episode.”
    “I only wonder what made you do such a thing.”
    “I was drunk, Lily. People do things like that when they’re foxed. But as I suppose you’ve never overindulged, you would find that hard to imagine.”
    She’d seen her father foxed countless times, which had given her ample acquaintance with the foolish things drink could make a person do. But she was hardly going to reveal any of that to Hal. “Drunk people are commonplace,” she said. “I can easily imagine how foolish you looked.”
    But now he cocked his head. “Can you? I was angry. I’d lost a good soldier, a good man who was desperate. He stole—only a little—from the colonel’s stores, and was discovered and shot in front of his mates.”
    “Oh. How horrible. I…”
    “Wouldn’t have ridden drunk and singing through town. No, of course not. It’s not an appropriate action.”
    She frowned. “I’m sorry about your