Page 55 of Heiress Gone Wild

“So am I. Your ideas always seem to wreak havoc in my life.”

“This one won’t,” she assured him. “In fact, I think what I have in mind just might make everything easier for both of us.”

That sparked his curiosity, but before he could inquire further, Irene’s voice intervened.

“Ladies,” she said, standing up and bringing everyone else to their feet, “shall we go through?”

She started out of the dining room to leave the men to their port, the other ladies following her, but Marjorie lingered long enough to lean down and whisper in his ear, “We’ll talk about it after dinner.”

With that, she departed, forcing him to put his curiosity aside, but afterward, when the men joined the ladies in the drawing room, neither he nor Marjorie was given a chance to bring up the topic, for David suggested bridge.

“There are eight of us,” he said. “No one would be left out.”

“We can’t,” Clara said, setting aside her coffee cup and standing up. “It’s nearly ten, so Rex and I must be going home. If my daughters keep to the routine they’ve developed of late, Daisy will be waking up any minute, crying like a banshee, which will wake Marianne, and between them, they’ll soon have the nursery in chaos.”

“How old are your daughters?” Marjorie asked.

“Marianne’s nearly four, and Daisy’s eighteen months, so they’re rather a handful. I must go stand by Nanny.”

“She just wants an excuse to tuck them back into bed,” Rex explained and turned to his wife. “I ordered the carriage brought around already.”

She nodded and turned to Jonathan. “Welcome home,” she said, underscoring his earlier thoughts about what home actually meant, and when she opened her arms, he walked into them gladly. “Don’t you dare stay away so long next time,” she whispered as she hugged him tight.

He couldn’t reply. Instead, he held her close, tightness squeezing his chest, the pain of love and regret. “I won’t,” he managed at last. “Besides,” he added, impelled to lighten the moment as they drew apart, “now that I know you won’t shoot me the minute I walk through the door, it’s an easy promise to keep.”

“You’re never safe on that score, little brother,” she countered at once, her voice severe, but she was smiling as she turned away.

After she and Rex had departed, David again suggested cards, but Jonathan glanced at Marjorie and negated that idea. “Why don’t the four of you play?” he said. “Don’t worry about us. Marjorie and I have some business matters to discuss.”

“My idea isn’t about business,” Marjorie whispered to him as the others moved toward the card table at the other end of the drawing room.

“Perhaps not, but there are some things involving your father’s estate we do need to go over. I’ll be back in a minute.”

He left the drawing room, and by the time he returned with his dispatch case, the others were immersed in their first rubber of auction bridge, and Marjorie was seated at a table on the other side of the room. Joining her, he set the black leather case on the table and sat down opposite her.

“As your guardian, I feel it’s important for you to know where you stand,” he began, but at the wry look she gave him, he stopped.

“It seems to me,” she said, “you already made where I stand pretty clear this afternoon. But don’t worry,” she added as he grimaced. “I’m not about to develop any romantic notions about you.”

Put like that, his assumption that she was in danger of such a thing seemed the height of conceit, and yet, her next words told him he hadn’t been too far off the mark.

“I have to admit,” she murmured, her expression softening, her cheeks tinting a faint pink, “I was feeling a little bit dreamy-eyed about you for a while. You were... I mean...” She glanced across the room to the couples playing bridge, then she leaned closer to him, and added in a whisper, “You were my first kiss, after all.”

In an instant, the memory of that kiss came flooding back, reminding him that she wasn’t the only one in danger of developing romantic notions—or at least, in his case, erotic ones.

“But,” she went on, “you’re the last man on earth a girl with sense would ever pin her hopes on.”

A point he’d attempted to underscore that very afternoon. “Quite so,” he said with an emphatic nod he feared was as much for his own benefit as hers. “Absolutely.”

“All that aside, we do seem to spend a great deal of time rubbing each other the wrong way.”

Or the right way, his baser masculine nature whispered to him.Depends on how you look at it.

Telling his baser masculine nature to shut up, he strove to give her a more appropriate reply. “It’s understandable you’d chafe a bit under my guardianship. Though my ward, you are a grown woman.” Even as he said those last few words, his body began to burn, and he felt like the worst of hypocrites.

“Exactly,” she agreed with disconcerting enthusiasm. “So, I was wondering if we might just dispense with titles?”

He frowned, puzzled. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

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