The Girl is Not For Christmas - Emma V Leech Page 0,23
cut me off because I won’t marry to please him.”
Livvy gaped at Kingston as he turned to face her.
“There see, I have shocked you.”
“And is she appalling?” she asked.
Kingston shook his head. “No, but I should be if I married her. She’s sixteen.”
“Good God!”
“Oh, you think that’s the worst of it,” he said, bitterness lacing each word. “I assure you it is not. Her parents agreed to the match three years ago. Three years I have denied him, and made him so furious he set out to ruin me. I tried to make my own way, you see. Nearly succeeded, too, until my father—he’s the Marquess of Eynsham—and the Duke of Olney got their heads together. The duke is the girl’s father, of course. A splendid match, is it not?”
Livvy could hardly speak from considering a match between this big, dissolute fellow and a child of sixteen,… thirteen when the match was proposed. Good God, and she’d thought her brother a monster for treating her so, and she was a grown woman. She considered her oldest niece, Susan, thirteen years old and still playing with dolls and reading fairy stories, and her stomach lurched. Yet Kingston had denied them, despite losing what must have been a lavish lifestyle, when he could have married the chit and gone about his way… he’d stood firm.
Livvy took a breath. She respected his actions, and he ought to know that. “You did right, my lord. Though it sticks in my throat to admit it, I… I admire you for doing the right thing.”
Kingston snorted and narrowed his eyes at her. “My, that must have stung.”
“A bit,” she admitted.
“There, there, Miss Penrose. Never fear, I shall say something shocking any moment now and the feeling will wear off.”
Despite everything, she laughed. “I never doubted it.”
They sat in silence for a while, which was surprisingly comfortable… or would have been if she wasn’t freezing. Yet she was not ready to go indoors.
“What will you do?”
He shrugged. “Damned if I know. I made my way gambling until now, which I do well enough to get by, but… but it seems I have a bit of a… a problem.”
“You cannot let yourself drink again, because next time you won’t stop until you’re dead in a ditch.”
He sighed. “You don’t mince your words, do you? I suppose I should say I find it refreshing, but it’s rather like being scoured with a scrubbing brush.”
“Invigorating,” Livvy said, nodding, though she knew he meant nothing of the sort.
“Painful,” he amended.
Livvy dared another glance at him and noted the troubled look in his eyes. “You can do it, you know. I recognise a stubborn individual when I see one, and yes, before you fling it in my face, it takes one to know one. I am stubborn, and so are you. You have the fortitude to resist your demons, my lord. Perhaps all you need is something else to focus your attention on.”
He nodded, surprising her with the crooked smile that touched his mouth. Goodness, but he had a lovely mouth. Livvy tore her gaze away, horrified at having noticed such a thing. He might not be the monster she had believed him to be, but he was still a man with the morals of an alley cat. She ought not be alone with him, let alone notice his lovely, lush, sensuous mouth.
Oh, damnation.
“Yes, I have thought the same, the trouble being I cannot turn my attention to earning an honest living, for one because I am a nobleman, and it is not the done thing—”
“Which you don’t give two hoots about,” Livvy put in.
He gave her the benefit of another lopsided grin which was far too endearing. “I do not.” His smile faded and he reached out, tugging a straw free from a nearby bale and twisting it between his long fingers. “But whatever I do, my father will ruin it. I’ve tried several times now and it isn’t only me who suffers when he destroys whatever I try to build. I don’t have the heart to try again, to make something work only to watch him reduce it all to rubble and dust. I certainly can’t drag anyone else into it and now… now I haven’t a farthing to my name.”
“What if your father didn’t know?”
Kingston shook his head. “He has an uncanny knack for finding things out. So, if earning my keep is not an option, that leaves me with gambling and dallying with the ladies… and we have