Page 51 of His Wicked Little Christmas

He found his shirt draped across the escritoire and tunneled his arm in the sleeve. “How about this, sweetheart? You marry that pathetic example of baron manhood, but we continue to work together. We’ll negotiate on a desk design some smog-filled morn in the near future, then I’ll drag you upstairs for a quick tup. Because I won’t be able to keep my damned hands off you if we’re ever,everin the same room.”

Franny unsuccessfully fiddled with the buttons at the nape of her neck, her furious words lost. Although her caustic tone was clear. Holding her gown closed, she snatched up her sketchpad and charcoal, searching the room for the rest of her attire.

Chance sighed through his teeth and pointed. On the chair before the hearth. When he’d gone down for her art supplies, he’d found their clothing strewn about the house and collected everything in a tidy pile. Even her hairpins. He didn’t want Mrs. Walker to find his cravat on the stairs and wonder what the hell had gone on the evening prior. Although he wouldn’t be surprised if Franny’s shouts of ecstasy had traveled down the corridor and directly to her.

“Don’t go,” he blurted when she turned her back on him, realizing it was too late. Realizing they needed a bit of distance to think this through.

Last night was the most incredible of my life.

Nine words that whispered through his mind.

Nine words he couldn’t release.

So, with a lingering glance filled with everything he’d lived his life without thus far, Franny was gone.

Leaving her stockings and one slipper but taking part of his heart.

Franny hobbled down the hallway to her bedchamber, through narrows bands of light and shadow. The rosewood paneling shone from a recent polishing she’d asked Mrs. Walker to organize. She wasn’t going to cry, she thought and sniffled into the wadded coat pressed to her chest.

There was no need.

This wasn’t like that last time, with Gerald Humbard III. Son of one of her father’s business partners. Chance Allerton was turning her away out of panic, not callousness. The viscount was scared. She’d noted the emotion shimmering plainly in his cobalt eyes.

Only, she didn’t know if she had the strength to fight him.

Thank goodness, she didn’t encounter any of the pathetically modest staff currently employed at Rose Hill on her slog of shame. She opened her bedchamber door with a sigh that turned into a gasp the second she looked in the room.

Ada, mother of her heart, sat curled on the settee. A cup of tea in her hand, a wretched pout on her face. “Oh, my cheeky girl, have you flipped the wheels off the carriage this time.”

Franny closed the door with a dull click and let the clothing she held tumble to the threadbare carpet. There was no way in Hades she could hide from the one person who, aside from a wayward viscount coming to know her well, knew herbest. “I did possibly accede to another dreadful impulse.”

“He won’t marry you,” Ada murmured and took a choked sip of tea. Like England, something she loathed. “Although I’ve seen the way he gazes at you. The way you gaze right back. Like two candles melting in the sun. Both when you think no one else is looking. But lust only creates trouble, dear heart. Never solves any in my humble experience. Your desire to sketch the man, don’t argue because I know the way your mind works, has tossed us in the drink this time.” She grunted and tapped the teacup’s chipped rim against her teeth. “I suppose we mustthank the heavens he’s poor as a church mouse and can only employ three people who might have seen you. If your father should hear of this, we’re doomed. I’ll be living with my brother and his horrid wife before spring. Do you know what they’re going to make me do with their children?”

Franny crossed to her vanity. The reflection displayed in the gilded mirror was a creature she didn’t recognize. Rosy cheeks. Swollen lips. Eyes alight with feminine power. And, oh God, her hair. She tugged her hand through tangled strands that would have impressed Medusa. “He asked, actually.”

In his roundabout, tiptoe fashion.

Franny knew it was absurd—but Chance Allerton’s carefully veiled vulnerability made her want to pitch herself over the cliff into love with him. Foolish girl.

Ada’s cup hit the table with a click. “He didwhat?”

Franny turned, clutching her gaping bodice. Plunking her bottom on the vanity’s marble edge, she shrugged. “It was half-hearted. Hasty. Not insincere so much as rummaging for a solution to a tangle he’s found himself mired in. Like a pig stuck in mud. It wasn’t pretty or romantic.”

“You said yes, of course.” At Franny’s silence, Ada’s face paled and she slumped, head dropping to her hands. “Aviscountwho looks at you like he wants to eat you in one bite and go back for seconds. A man, a genuine one, obstinate and arrogant, but aman. When the lout your father has lined up is a boy. Please, dear girl, please tell me you said yes.”

Franny shook her head. She wasn’t selling herself to Viscount Remington. Baron Hillsdale, yes,fine. Baroness of naught, signed, sealed, and delivered. She’d never expected to have achoice. Her father had told her bluntly from the time she’d begun to attract masculine attention that she didn’t.

But she would not, could not, start a life with a man who didn’t want her when she suspected she was in love withhim.

“You still plan to marry Hillsdale? Afterthis?” She gestured to Franny’s disastrous state.

A furious fire, unusual for her, sparked deep in Franny’s belly. Like any woman, she could be a force when jammed into a corner. “We’repurchasing each other. My money will be all Hillsdale’s got any say over. The rest is mine to govern. I’ll take my control where I can.”

“As if life works that way.” Ada released a scathing huff through her fingers. “What about the girl? If you decide to skip outta here before daybreak, which I think you should. What about that poor child?”

Franny pinched the bridge of her nose, tears stinging her eyes.Kat.

“You could take her to Hampton Hall until the new year. Mrs. Streeter invited us because she knew this silly farce of yours was going to blow like a faulty kettle. Her husband’s estate is a twenty-minute carriage ride away. Inherited of a sort from Streeter’s father, a viscount who didn’t acknowledge him until the ancient sot was drawing his last. Unusual set of circumstances for a part-Romani bastard. Society can’t decide whether to accept the man or not, and then he goes and marries an earl’s daughter, making it an impossible situation. The English are a confounding lot. I swear to the ground they are.”