Lady Lilias and the Devil in Plaid - Julie Johnstone Page 0,6
lead the way. All he had done was greet Owen and tell him that he looked to be the sort of man who would easily pick up swimming. Then he’d patted each of her hounds on the head and told them they were good boys. Those two things confirmed her instinct that Nash wanted friends, despite his words to the contrary, whether he realized it or not.
With all these thoughts in her head, she bent down to remove her slippers, but before she could do so, Nash’s voice washed over her from above. “What are you doing?”
It seemed obvious to her, but in her experience—admittedly only with her father—a man’s powers of observation often needed spectacles. So she brought herself upright and pointed down at her feet. “Taking off my shoes so I can teach Owen to swim.”
“Do you have parents?” Nash’s tone was incredulous.
Before she could answer the question, he launched another at her. “Do you have a chaperone?”
She opened her mouth to respond, but another question came at her like a bullet. “How the devil did you get out of your house unnoticed? You’d be ruined if anyone caught you with us.” He shoved a hand through his wavy hair. “One of us would have to wed you.” His left hand took the place of his right to tangle through his thick, dark hair. She wanted to touch that hair, but thankfully, she refrained. He glanced to Owen. “Had you thought of that?”
Owen answered with a shake of his head as Lilias stood there in mute fascination. Nash scoffed. “Of course not. Are you prepared to wed this girl?” He pointed at her, and she found she still could not speak. Owen apparently did not have the same affliction. He opened his mouth to respond, but Nash cut him off just as he had done to Lilias. “I don’t know how I ended up out here. I—”
“I do believe the woman in my house is my mother,” she interrupted, certain he was about to leave them and she desperately did not want him to go. “She claims to be, anyway. And if she’s not, well, then—” Lilias set her hands on her hips as she imagined one of the heroines in her books would do when giving someone a set down. “That would be shocking. It would inspire loads of questions. Such as, what did she do with my mother?” Lilias tapped a finger against her chin, another Gothic heroine move. “Hmm… I do look like her, so I think it’s safe to say that she is my mother, and we can conclude that I do have a parent,” she finished cheekily.
Nash’s lips parted in obvious astonishment, and she did not bother to repress her smug smile. Finally, it was she who was rendering him speechless. She offered a quick prayer of thanks to God for her elephant-like memory and then said in a scolding voice, “My father died this past year.” She notched up her eyebrows to let Nash know that now was the appropriate time for him to feel remorse for his unthinking question.
Instead, he turned to Owen and asked, “Is she always like this?”
Owen nodded, his mop of blond hair falling across his right eye.
She would have been incensed by Nash’s question, which implied there was something wrong with her, except his tone held unmistakable admiration. She grinned. Finally, someone who had an appreciation for people who refused to conform! She allowed herself one moment to savor this before she launched back into the task of volleying answers at him just as quickly as he’d shot questions at her.
“I did have a chaperone, Miss Portsmith, but I only had her for a short while. My papa didn’t believe in chaperones. He had a free spirit stuck in an earl’s stuffy life.”
When Nash laughed, she grinned and kept going. “Mama drove Miss Portsmith away with unreasonable demands—Miss Portsmith’s words, not mine—but I must confess, I was not sad to see her depart. I didn’t particularly like having someone watch my every move and want to accompany me everywhere, but I do think my sister, Nora, could use a chaperone. She’s only nine, and she’s quite a handful already.” She took a breath, certain Nash would tell her to be quiet or some such thing, but a smile teased his lips. He appeared to be following her every word. Another tingling thrill went through her. “I get out of my home down a convenient tree.” She pointed