Page 41 of Bound By her Earl

Amanda sighed as if this was a disappointing if predictable answer.

“I suppose you go in for that sort of thing, don’t you?” she said with a distinct note of pity in her voice.

This was not an answer—and Benedict truly could not conjure a response.

Which, in the end, might have been just as well as Emily chose that moment to reenter the foyer, a harried expression on her face.

“There you two are,” she said. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

Her voice was tense, and Benedict felt a sudden stab of terror that perhaps she’d thought he’d hied off with her sister for nefarious purposes. He could hardly blame her for suspecting him, given how he’d ended up with Emily in his arms in the first place. He felt intensely grateful that there was an entire foyer’s worth of space between himself and Amanda.

He felt, moreover, curiously annoyed that Lord Drowton wasn’t here punching Benedict in the face. Benedict had been so caught up in worrying about his previous inappropriate behavior that he hadn’t paused to consider that his current behavior—which was to say, alone with Miss Amanda—was evenmoreinappropriate if one disregarded the lack of amorous intent. After all, he hadn’t been betrothed the first time.

If his daughter had been spending time with such a man, Benedict certainly would not have been so lackadaisical about it. Nor, he assumed, would Emily, who could transparently hold her own and would no doubt prove a fearsome parent.

Case in point, she was presently eyeing her sister with a glare that could have melted glass.

“What,” she asked Amanda archly, “have you been up to?”

Amanda put on an entirely unconvincing look of innocence. “I have been welcoming my new brother into the family!”

Despite everything—and at this point, he really did meaneverything—Benedict found himself oddly flattered to be considered someone’s brother. It was also rather astonishing how comfortable the title settled upon him. Already any time where he had considered Miss Amanda Rutley as a potential bride felt like the distant past, like a bizarre dream that fades upon waking. He’d not been flattered when she’d called himold, of course, but she did now strike him as rather too young for him as well.

Emily, on the other hand, was no flighty child, and the unimpressed look she gave her sister only served to emphasize this point.

“Kindly endeavor to at least pretend you were raised properly, would you?” Emily asked in a tone that made it clear this was an order, not a true request. Benedict found himself fighting back a smirk. Perhaps he was suited to the older brother role after all for all that he’d not had practice.

Emily turned on him as Amanda sighed, put out. “And you—” she began before cutting herself off. He watched as she wiped her ire away and forced her face into a mask of politeness.

He…did not care for it.

“I beg your pardon,” she said solicitously, and it was justawful. “But we are gathering for dinner, My Lord. My father and your mother have already been seated at the table. Would you be so kind as to join us?”

She was every inch the proper hostess, and he struggled to consider this a good sign.

“Of course,” he said, offering her his arm. He didn’t know how else to respond, not in the face of such aggressive politeness. She tucked her hand neatly into his elbow, not making eye contact for even a moment.

He tried not to let it bother him. He would not demand she look at him—he was not quite so autocratic as all that. Besides, her sister was still present. And he would not, as he longed to do, drag her off and demand to know what she’d thought of the letters…and then kiss the answers out of her if she refused to give them. She always did give up arguing when he kissed her.

Instead, he led her wordlessly into the drawing room, feeling that he’d successfully navigated his relationship with one Rutley sister…but worrying that he still had a long way to go with the sister who mattered to him the most.

CHAPTER 12

“Ilike him.”

Amanda would not be Amanda if she stooped to such banalities as, say, knocking before entering a room, so Emily was not at all surprised when her sister burst through her bedchamber door while Emily was still tending her morning toilette.

It was now two days until the wedding; the special license had been procured, and the church booked. There were approximately a thousand other things to do, however, and Emily struggled to care overmuch about any of them. All told, she would have preferred to stay in bed, instead.

Being the object of roiling gossip was, as it turned out, very tiring.

“Who, dear?” she asked absently as she jabbed a few extra hairpins into her simple coiffure. She had far too much to do today to be lackadaisical about controlling her curls.

“TheEarl, Emmy. Do keep up.”

Amanda was splayed flat on her back on Emily’s bed. If Emily had tried such a thing after getting dressed for the day, she would lose every single hairpin she’d ever placed in her curls. Amanda popped up. Her hair looked fine.

Emily turned away from her dressing table to look at her sister head on.

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