Page 8 of Crying Wolfe
Ruffian?He’d been called worse. But damned if old rich British ladies weren’t the meanest creatures on God’s green earth.
Eli’s mouth opened and closed like a goddamned goldfish as the girl—Rosaline?—put her hands together as if in prayer.
“Please, Lady Brackenfeld, this isn’t what it looks like.”
“Oh? Then please explain to me just who that man is, and what he’s doing in your bedroom!”
She looked back at him, those round doe eyes swimming with moisture, pleading with him to absolve her. To say something.Anything.
Eli poked around his spinning head for a fix, and realized that anything he could say damned either her or him further in the eyes of this battle-axe.
Besides, they were all sorts of squeamish here in the old country, he’d been led to understand. Had more rules than a virginal convent when it came to the particulars between the sexes.
He could land them in a deeper pile of dung if he opened his mouth now.
“He’s her fiancé,” Morley blurted. “To be married within a fortnight.”
Still reeling from the aforementioned slug to the guts, Eli swallowed another blow that emptied his lungs and drained all the blood from his extremities and rushed it to his head.
Oh shit, the room was tilting. He put out a hand and steadied himself on the bedpost. Is this what women felt like before they swooned?
Lady Brackenfeld’s features may have relaxed a little, his vision was too fuzzy to tell. “Well,” she smoothed her hands over her shawl. “Well, this is still highly improper. I don’t know how I feel about—”
Morley took control of the situation. “Emmett, why don’t you take Lady Brackenfeld back to her rooms to pour them that sherry and assure Lucy that all is well. I’ll be along shortly to clear this up.” He turned back toward Eli and Rosaline, his pleasant smile dying a bitter death as he glared at them both. “Just as soon as I have a word with the impatient couple.”
Emmett, the lean man with what he was coming to recognize as a familial trait of wide, blue eyes, anxiously gestured out the door to his prospective mother-in-law, offering her his elbow.
Eli didn’t miss the speaking look between Rosaline and her brother. There was a desperation to it.
An unspeakable fear that set his senses on edge.
Once the old woman drifted out of earshot, Morley shut the door firmly, allowing the remaining occupants of the room to visibly deflate.
“Quick thinking, Morley.” Eli strode forward and clapped his old friend on his solid, steady shoulder. “But doesn’t it seem like a fortnight might be a bit of a stretch for a convincing farce of an engagement? I mean, I just blew in from across the pond yesterday.”
“No, Eli…” Morley pried his fingers from the rifle one by one, setting it down behind the door with visible reluctance. “A fortnight is how long it will take me to procure the marriage license.”
CHAPTER3
“Come the fuck again?” Eli strode closer to Morley, if only to make sure he was hearing the lawman correctly.
Rosaline scampered out of his path and retreated to the bed where Prudence went to console her.
Morley, a man of medium stature with the strength of a titan and a force of will as hard and unbending as tempered steel, now regarded him with a damned unsettling sort of helpless regret. “I’m sorry, Eli, but under these circumstances, it’s the only course of action.”
“I can think of probably a dozen different courses of action. Not the least of which is jumping out that window head-first.”
His old friend ran a hand over his sharp, angular face, uncovering grooves of exhaustion deepening by the moment. “Now’s not the time to be hyperbolic, Eli. This is damned serious. The Goode family has been through more than enough scandal, and something like this might just see the entire name crumble. We are really at a pivotal moment with Emmett’s much-needed alliance with Lady Brackenfeld’s family, and—”
Eli put his hand up. “I feel for you, friend, I do. But I fail to see how your delinquent sister breaking into my house and touching or taking my shit without my permission behooves me to shackle myself to some stranger untildeath do we part.”
Prudence put a defensive hand on Rosaline’s shoulder. “She’s not a delinquent, she’s a dear heart! Besides, her trespassing in your home isn’t what forces our hands here. It’s the fact that you broke into the window rather than gaining entrance through the front door like any regular person would do.”
Eli’s blood began to boil. “I chased thisclearlyirregular young lady across an ice-laden ledge to save your asses from being robbed! I didn’t want to make a scene while you had guests, so I thought I’d get back whatever it was she’d stolen, scare her against any more crooked behavior, and be on my way. I was gonna save you all the burden of theatrics and tell you in private—” He threw his hands up against the invisible walls closing in. “Know what? I don’t have to explain myself to you. What are you doing with your sister-in-law sleeping in the attic anyhow? You treat her like the help?”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Morely answered, “No, Eli, this house was built before the eighteenth century. Our servants often sleep below stairs by the kitchens and the storage.”
“Should have fucking guessed,” he muttered. “Americans put our servants up top, so we don’t have to climb so many stairs.”
