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Ella showed no signs of being one of them. Emphatically not.
Which led to the question: what could he offer her?
The ability to read his eyes? A husband who could read hers?
He knew instinctively that she preferred directness. Truth. She ought to know that he would never marry Fulvia.
“Did your insinuation that I had never trod a rear staircase count as an Unkind Thought?” he asked, as they started up the final, narrow flight of stairs.
“One of many,” Ella said, tossing him a rueful look over his shoulder. “It’s been quite a day.”
“You might need to allow yourself more than four Unkind Thoughts in the future.”
Ella pushed open a warped door that didn’t even have a latch.
Fiennes felt a bolt of homicidal rage and caught back an expletive. The viscount was a blackguard. Fiennes had judged him a conniving fool, but now he wondered if the man wasn’t worse. There was something deliberate about the way Ella had been left banished and unprotected. Something ugly.
“Oh? Why?” she asked. “Please close the door after you. I don’t want Joe to escape.”
“I seem to annoy you.”
He stooped to pass through the doorway, its lintel threatening to knock him unconscious. The attic wasn’t as bad as he had imagined. Windows spilled light onto battered, golden wood planks.
Over to one side, a snowy white bed was piled with pillows. Beside it was a table covered with towering stacks of books. A small gray cat was sleeping on the bed; she raised her head, blinked at them, and curled up into a tighter circle.
A scrabble of claws announced Ella’s squirrel. The little animal threw himself across the floor, tripped over her slipper, and rolled onto his back. Ella picked him up, whispering an endearment, and tucked him on her shoulder. His fur was red, darker than Ella’s, but his bright eyes were vivid and intelligent, like hers.
“So you agree with me that Sunday dinners in the future might be awkward?” she asked, giving him a wry smile.
“Sunday dinners, but there’s also Monday breakfasts, and Tuesday luncheons, and picnics by the river.”
Her forehead pleated. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“Marriage,” Fiennes said, leaning back against the closed door. “Marriage to me, Ella.”
CHAPTER TEN
A SHOE—OR A CANDIED VIOLET?
Lord Peregrine had lost his mind.
Ella was so startled that her mouth fell open.
“It must have been the gown,” she said, finally.
“What?”
“I can only assume that you were blindsided by my gown.” Or my breasts, she thought.
He snorted. “No.”
“I see no reason for disbelief. The only thing that changed between this meeting and our last was that you saw me in Mrs. Quimby’s ballgown.”
He leaned back against the attic door and favored her with a lazy, strangely sweet grin. He didn’t look overcome by lust; she wasn’t sure how to interpret his expression. “The gown certainly was a revelation.”
Ella shook her head. “I know that men make fools of themselves over women’s figures, but how can you allow a plump bosom to fog your logical thought?” She blinked. “I shouldn’t have said that! Shall we just agree to forget everything you just said, because it was stark raving mad?”
His smile deepened. “Mad, am I?”
