Worth Winning by Parker Elling Page A

tactic.”
    “What?”
    “Repeating the question. I used to do it too, whenever my father quizzed me. ‘Five times thirteen? You want me to say what thirteen times five is? As in thirteen times five?’ and so on, until I’d enough time to do the addition.”
    “Not a maths person?”
    “Oh, I loved maths, just not multiplication. Now my stepsister,” she paused, and shook her head. “Claire loathes maths. Used to feign sickness to avoid maths lessons and was always trying to get me to collude with her. I colored her tongue blue once, to try to help out. You wouldn’t believe how upset our parents were.”
    “I can only imagine,” he said, his lips quirking. He admitted that she was an amusing baggage, when she wasn’t busy peppering him with questions, as though they were reenacting the Inquisition.
    “You have siblings? Or a stepmother?”
    Charles smiled and replied, “No—only child, I’m afraid. It’s just that I, too, have always hated maths. So I can relate to your clever little stepsister, though I never went so far as coloring my tongue. What illness was she trying to feign?”
    Julia shrugged and said baldly, “Bubonic plague.”
    When Charles laughed, she continued, “We were both young and had no idea what symptoms should have manifested. My father was terribly upset—said we didn’t understand the devastation of illness and . . . well, he’s a rector. Suffice it to say that we had to sit through several lectures not only about our ability to be sensitive, empathetic Christians but also about what the actual symptoms look like. My father hates it when we’re inaccurate, even in our lies.”
    Julia stopped walking and looked pointedly at Charles, eyebrows raised to remind him that she hadn’t forgotten her original question. “You. Lord Robeson. Friends?”
    He tilted his head in acknowledgment, saying, “Fine. I’ll admit to stalling. The truth is complicated and a bit awkward to answer: more no than yes. Robeson and I have known one another for years. We have friends and”—he paused; he couldn’t very well say “mistresses”—“acquaintances that sometimes overlap. But we’ve never been particularly close.”
    It might have been his imagination, but he could almost feel the tension easing out of her. She started walking again, and the basket of lemons swung to the rhythm of her gait. Charles frowned at the basket. He was certain he ought to have asked to carry it—that it would have been the gentlemanly thing to do. But now, so far into their walk, it felt silly to suddenly break rhythm and ask.
    “And yet you don’t call him Lord Robeson. You don’t treat him deferentially.”
    Charles inclined his head. That was, indeed, a slip on his part. As a mere mister, he probably should have been slightly more reverential and formal in his address. He forced a fake shrug. “As I said, we’ve known each other for a long time. We’ve never been close, but we’ve never stood on formality, either.”
    She didn’t press him further, didn’t question why he was staying with someone who wasn’t actually a friend, and Charles said, a bit tentatively, “I gather you’re not friends.”
    Julia smiled. Even to Charles, who admittedly didn’t know her well, it didn’t seem like a happy smile. “In the past, more yes than no. He was younger, obviously, and hadn’t inherited.”
    He repeated her words and tone in his head several times before asking, “You make it sound almost like a bad thing that he’s a viscount.”
    “It doesn’t appear to have made him happy, does it?” She made it sound more like a statement than a question, and even Charles could tell that now was not the time to press further. Though he hadn’t really marked their steps, he noticed that they were approaching a nicely proportioned but modest-looking two-story. More house than cottage, though just barely.
    Julia turned toward him now, opening the wooden half gate that was clearly more for decoration