Three Weeks With Lady X by Eloisa James Page A

gathered her up into his arms and remarked, “At least you smell better now.”
    He glanced down in time to see cool gray eyes narrow.
    “So do you,” she said.
    Thorn stared down at her. Had she? Yes, she had. “That was not a polite comment,” he told her.
    She looked off, into the corner of the bedchamber, but her implication was obvious: he had been impolite to point out her former odor.
    “I apologize for mentioning your condition. How old are you?” he asked, with real curiosity.
    Another silence ensued, as if she was debating whether to answer. At last she said, “I shall be six very soon.”
    “Almost six! I thought you were three. Or four at most.”
    She regarded him again. Silently.
    “My father will like you,” he said, grinning.
    Her nose tilted slightly in the air, and she did not deign to answer.
    “You are a mystery,” Thorn said, now striding toward the stairs. “You sound as if you’ve had a governess. But you’re deplorably thin, and you have no clothing. Generally speaking, those things are difficult to reconcile with the having of a governess. Of course, there are always exceptions.”
    “I never had a governess,” Rose announced with a crushing air of condescension. “Mr. Pancras was my tutor.”
    They had reached the entryway. Thorn took his coat and Rose’s shabby pelisse from Fred (Iffley having taken himself off for good), carried Rose outside, and deposited her in his carriage.
    “Have you ever met your aunt?” he asked, once they were underway.
    “No. As Papa informed you in his letter, she lives in America.”
    “By all accounts, that’s a marvelous place, full of bison.”
    “What is that?”
    “An animal larger than an ox, and much shaggier.”
    “I am uninterested in bisons,” Rose observed. “And I shouldn’t like to live in America. Papa said that the ocean was perilous, and that my mother’s sister was a whittie-whattie twaddle-head.”
    At that moment Thorn was struck by the conviction that he was never going to let Rose anywhere near the land of bison. Nor was he going to hand her to Eleanor, as if she were a piece of unwanted china. He was thinking about what that meant for his life when she asked, “Have you traveled to America?”
    “I have not. You are very fluent for a nearly six-year-old.”
    “Papa said I have an old soul.”
    “Nonsense. You have a very young soul, to go with that lisp of yours.”
    At this, her eyes narrowed and a little bit of pink stole into her cheeks. “I do not lisp.”
    “Yes, you do.” It was very slight—but rather enchanting.
    She turned her sharp little nose into the air. “If I lisped, Mr. Pancras would have taught me otherwise.”
    “Why the hell didn’t you have a governess?” Will had always been peculiar, but it sounded as if marriage, or being widowed, had made him even more so.
    “Papa believed that women added unnecessary complications to a household.”
    “No nursemaid?”
    She shook her head. “The kitchen maid helped me dress.”
    “Where is Pancras? Or, to ask the same question another way, why did you arrive by special delivery, and why were you dirty and thin?”
    “My father said that in the event of tribulation or strife, I was to be sent to you.” She stopped again.
    “ ‘Tribulation’?” Thorn leaned back against the carriage seat. He was used to clever children. Hell, all six of his siblings could talk circles around most Oxford graduates. But it could be that Rose took the cake. “Do you know how to read?”
    “Of course. I’ve been reading ever since I was born.”
    He raised an eyebrow, and she stiffened.
    “Where is Pancras?” he repeated. “Why did he not bring you himself, and why have you no belongings?”
    “He couldn’t bring me. He had to take the first appointment that was offered to him, in Yorkshire. There was a delivery going from the brewery to London, and it cost much less for my fare than it would have on the mail coach. Plus my trunk went at no cost. I’m