My Fair Marchioness (Scandalous Affairs Book 3) by Christi Caldwell (best short books to read txt) 📗

“I’ll have you know, if you have to say that you were perfectly charming, you were decidedly not as charming as you believe, my lord.”

Instead of indignant outrage, a smile pulled at Harris’ lips, not the cynical one he usually wore, but rather, a real one that dimpled his cheeks and wrought havoc upon her heart.

Furthermore, her words for him had been a lie anyway, and perhaps his smile said he knew it. With the exception of his kiss, he had been charming. From the moment she’d entered the breakfast room yesterday, he’d been too charming. He’d not been rude or insulting, but rather, warm. And that had proven more terrifying than his disdain.

“My lord again, am I?”

“When you practiced deceit and offered your name under false pretenses of friendship, then yes. My lord you are, and my lord you will remain.” With that, Julia picked up the parasol the duchess had lent her and fiddled with the scrap, struggling.

“Here.” Harris handed her the reins of the curricle and took the umbrella from her fingers.

“I have it,” she lied. She’d not a clue how to open the blasted frippery.

She tensed at having the pair of chestnut horses under her control, but he’d mastered her umbrella and had the reins back almost quicker than a blink.

“Thank you,” she said gruffly, angling the frilly scrap at her shoulder.

Harris guided the curricle down a side path before pulling it off to the side.

She stiffened. “Wh—?”

“I wasn’t practicing deceit,” he interrupted. “Not in the way you are thinking. You don’t trust me.” His wasn’t a question. “And if we’d have the truth between us, then yes, I am suspicious of your sudden reappearance.” He paused, and his eyes locked with hers. “The duchess mourned the loss of her niece—you—for years. It was the saddest I’ve ever seen her. And after her sadness faded, she committed herself wholeheartedly to hiring the best detectives. Men who scoured the streets of London for a sight or a hint of a little girl lost. There were many false leads, and the people she hired took advantage of her, bringing forward some child or another in hopes of receiving the grandest of prizes. And every time she realized that child was not you? I saw her heart break all over again.”

Her chest ached at the image Harris painted of a woman who’d been hurt too many times and who would now be hurt again.

“You don’t have to do this. You can leave and spare her more of the hurt…”

“It is because you care about her,” she said softly. “Your treatment of me.”

“Of course it is,” he replied, so automatically there could be no doubting the veracity of his words.

And God help her, there was a softening inside.

But then, honesty had that effect. It was so rare a commodity in the streets as to be rarer than the unicorns Adairia had told tales of.

To give her fingers a purpose, she snapped the parasol shut and set it between them, the tiniest of barriers.

Harris gave her a look. “You find it so very hard to believe that I’m capable of caring about someone?”

“I do.” Julia glanced down at her gloves, the ones concealing her callused palms. She clasped her fingers tightly as a memory slipped in of an elegantly clad lady, horror etched in her features as she looked disdainfully upon Julia’s floral offering. “Not because I presume to know you,” she was quick to add.

She is offensive to me. See that she begs at another corner, or call the constable.

The echo of her footfalls striking the cobblestones as she’d raced from the Drury Lane theater while a certain stop at Newgate echoed loudly in her mind.

Feeling his eyes upon her once more, she looked up and attempted to explain. “The lords and ladies whom I’ve observed, Harris? They aren’t capable of caring about anyone but themselves.” They’d let a child starve, with the only regret expressed the fact that they were an eyesore upon the pretty existence they preferred looking upon. “They don’t see past their own interests and desires. They like their life pretty and unfettered.” Her mouth hardened, and her gaze locked unblinkingly on his shoulder. “They do things like have children carted off so they don’t have to be confronted by the sight of them. Or who offer coin in the dead of winter, but only if they can have a feel…”

Even as those words left her lips, she wanted to call them back, but it was too late, and everything curled up—her toes, her fingers, her insides. All tightening with the shame of that admission. There’d been too many times she and Adairia had been so desperate that Julia had sold a touch to save Adairia’s virtue, to spare her sister. Shame scraped along her insides, and she sucked in a breath. “And so, yes, the idea that people of your station are capable of caring for anyone? That is… was foreign to me.” Her voice emerged as a pained whisper.

Please, stop looking at me.

Please, look away.

Please, just forget absolutely everything I’ve said.

But then his fingers grazed her chin, and Julia’s body tensed as he guided her chin up, forcing her eyes to meet his. “Is that… something you have experience with?” he asked harshly.

She heard the hatred there. The fury.

Shame continued blossoming within her, unfurling like a flower of humiliation, because she already knew what this man thought of her. As such, she wanted to deny it. But she couldn’t. Because to hell with him and to hell with those like him. Julia firmed her jaw and jerked her chin up, loosening his hold upon her.

“Aye. That’s something I have experience with, Harris.”

Harris, because it was easier to call him out that way. Using his Christian name made it easier to feel he