The Lady Always Wins (10 page)

Footsteps receded; the door creaked once more, and the men walked out.

Miss Pursling didn’t look at Robert once they’d left, not even to acknowledge his existence with a glare. Instead, she pushed herself to her knees, made a fist, and slammed it into the hard back of the sofa—once, then twice, hitting it so hard that it moved forward with the force of her blow—all one hundred pounds of it.

He caught her wrist before she landed a third strike. “There now,” he said. “You don’t want to hurt yourself over him. He doesn’t deserve it.”

She stared up at him, her eyes wide.

He didn’t see how any man could call this woman timid. She positively crackled with defiance. He let go of her arm before the fury in her could travel up his hand and consume him. He had enough anger of his own.

“Never mind me,” she said. “Apparently I’m not capable of helping myself.”

He almost jumped. He wasn’t sure how he’d expected her voice to sound—sharp and severe, like her appearance suggested? Perhaps he’d imagined her talking in a high squeak, as if she were the rodent she’d been labeled. But her voice was low, warm, and deeply sensual. It was the kind of voice that made him suddenly aware that she was on her knees before him, her head almost level with his crotch.

Save that for later, too.

“I’m a rodent. All rodents squeal when poked.” She punched the sofa once again. She was going to bruise her knuckles if she kept that up. “Are you planning to poke me, too?”

“No.” Stray thoughts didn’t count, thank God; if they did, all men would burn in hell forever.

“Do you always skulk behind curtains, hoping to overhear intimate conversations?”

Robert felt the tips of his ears burn. “Do you always leap behind sofas when you hear your fiancé coming?”

“Yes,” she said defiantly. “Didn’t you hear? I’m like a book that has been mislaid. One day, one of his servants will find me covered in dust in the middle of spring-cleaning. ‘Ah,’ the butler will say. ‘That’s where Miss Wilhelmina has ended up. I had forgotten all about her.’”

Wilhelmina Pursling? What a dreadful appellation.

She took a deep breath. “Please don’t tell anyone. Not about any of this.” She shut her eyes and pressed her fingers to her eyes. “Please just go away, whoever you are.”

He brushed the curtains to one side and made his way around the sofa. From a few feet away, he couldn’t even see her. He could only imagine her curled on the floor, furious to the point of tears.

“Minnie,” he said. It wasn’t polite to call her by so intimate a name. And yet he wanted to hear it on his tongue.

She didn’t respond.

“I’ll give you twenty minutes,” he said. “If I don’t see you downstairs by then, I’ll come up for you.”

For a few moments, there was no answer. Then: “The beautiful thing about marriage is the right it gives me to monogamy. One man intent on dictating my whereabouts is enough, wouldn’t you think?”

He stared at the sofa in confusion before he realized that she thought he’d been threatening to drag her out.

Robert was good at many things. Communicating with women was not one of them.

“That’s not what I meant,” he muttered. “It’s just…” He walked back to the sofa and peered over the leather top. “If a woman I cared about was hiding behind a sofa, I would hope that someone would take the time to make sure she was well.”

There was a long pause. Then fabric rustled and she looked up at him. Her hair had begun to slip out of that severe bun; it hung around her face, softening her features, highlighting the pale whiteness of her scar. Not pretty, but…interesting. And he could have listened to her talk all night.

She stared at him in puzzlement. “Oh,” she said flatly. “You’re attempting to be kind.” She sounded as if the possibility had never occurred to her before. She let out a sigh, and gave him a shake of her head. “But your kindness is misplaced. You see,
that
—” she pointed toward the doorway where her near-fiancé had disappeared “—that is the best possible outcome I can hope for. I have wanted just such a thing for years. As soon as I can stomach the thought, I’ll be marrying him.”

There was no trace of sarcasm in her voice. She stood. With a practiced hand, she smoothed her hair back under the pins and straightened her skirts until she was restored to complete propriety.

Only then did she stoop, patting under the sofa to find where she’d tossed the knight. She examined the chessboard, cocked her head, and then very, very carefully, set the piece back into place.

While he was standing there, watching her, trying to make sense of her words, she walked out the door.

Want to read the rest?
The Duchess War
is available now.

Other Books by Courtney

The Brothers Sinister Series

The Governess Affair

The Duchess War

A Kiss for Midwinter

The Heiress Effect
— mid-2013

The Countess Conspiracy
— late-2013

The Mistress Rebellion
— 2014
 

Not in any series

What Happened at Midnight

The Lady Always Wins
 

The Turner Series

Unveiled

Unlocked

Unclaimed

Unraveled
 

The Carhart Series

This Wicked Gift

Proof by Seduction

Trial by Desire

Author’s Note

U
SUALLY I WRITE
about real places. But there are no such places as Chester-on-Woolsey, Anniston, Castingham, or Chapton. There is no Prince’s Canal, either. I made up locations because the British railway timeline didn’t fit my fictional needs. I either had to change history or change geography; I chose the latter.

But this story is still based on historical events. The 1840s in England saw fortunes being made (and lost) on railways, and there was a lot of animosity between competing methods of transportation. Canal owners and railway owners clashed, but there was also a good bit of railway-on-railway hostility. (“Railway-on-railway” sounds so dirty.)

In 1846, the railway bubble collapsed. Simon’s decision to diversify came at precisely the right time. But for those who might worry about it, in my version of Britain, Simon and Ginny’s company survived the collapse of the bubble—as did many of the major arterial connections.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Carey (my Carey), Silvs, and the Dog of the Week™, for emotional support and not complaining about all the paper everywhere. Robin Harders and Martha Trachtenberg, thanks for the editing. And Leigh, Tessa, and Carey (Bill’s Carey)—for everything.

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The Lady Always Wins: © 2012 by Courtney Milan.

Cover design © 2013 Courtney Milan.

Cover photograph © Mircea Bezergheanu | shutterstock.com.

Digital Edition 1.0

All rights reserved. Where such permission is sufficient, the author grants the right to strip any DRM which may be applied to this work.