A Portrait of Love (The Academy of Love #3) - Minerva Spencer Page 0,135

night, for that matter.

“Why aren’t you in there,” he gestured with his chin toward the ballroom, “dancing? Er, my lady,” he added a trifle belatedly.

She snorted and hiked up her dress, exhibiting a shocking amount of leg. “With this?”

Iain gawked. He’d seen girl’s legs, of course, but never a lady’s leg. Her stockings were embroidered with flowers—daisies, perhaps. His groin gave an appreciative thump as he studied the gentle swell of her calf. She had shapely legs for such a tiny thing.

She dropped her skirts. “Are you ogling my limb?”

“What do you expect if you go around hiking up your skirt like that?” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. Iain squeezed his eyes shut and waited for her to start screeching. But the sound of giggling made him open them again.

She eyed him skeptically. “You’re not like the other footmen.”

What was Iain supposed to say to that?

“You look very young. How long have you been a footman?”

“Today is my first day.”

“You shan’t keep your job very long if you argue with any other members of my family. Or ogle their limbs.”

His face heated and he pursed his lips.

She looked delighted by whatever she saw on his face. “How old are you?”

“Nineteen, my lady.”

“What a bouncer!”

“How old are you?” Iain bit out, and then wanted to howl. At this rate, he would be jobless before breakfast.

“Sixteen.” She stopped smiling and her eyes went dull, like a vivid sunset losing its color. “But I might as well be forty. I shan’t even have a Season.”

“I thought all young ladies had at least one Season.” What drivel. What the devil did he know about aristocrats, Seasons, or any of it? It was as if some evil imp had taken over his body: some pixie or spirit determined to get him sacked. Or jailed. He clamped his mouth shut, vowing not to open it again until it was time to put food in it.

Luckily his employer’s daughter was too distracted to find his behavior odd.

“Tonight was my betrothal ball.” Her shapely, shell-pink lips turned down at the corners. “Why should my father go to the expense of a Season when he can dispose of me so cheaply without one?”

It seemed like an odd way to talk about a betrothal but Iain kept that observation behind his teeth.

“The Earl of Trentham is my betrothed,” she added, not in need of any responses from him to hold a conversation. “He is madly in love.”

The silence became uncomfortable. Iain cleared his throat. “You must be very happy, then,” he said when he could bear it no longer.

Her eyes, which had been vague and distant, sharpened and narrowed. “He’s not in love with me, you dunce. He is in love with a property that is part of my dowry. Some piece of land that is critical to a business venture he and my father have planned.”

Iain’s flare of anger at being called dunce quickly died when he saw the misery and self-loathing on her face.

“Lord Trentham will have his land, my father will get to take part in the earl’s investment, and I? Well, I will have—” She stopped, as if suddenly aware of what she was saying and to whom she was saying it. She glared up at him, her gray eyes suddenly molten silver. “Why am I telling you any of this? How could you ever know what it is like to be an ugly cripple? You will never be forced to marry someone who is twice your age. A man who views you with less pleasure than he does a piece of dirt.” Her mouth twisted. “I am no more than a broodmare to him.”

Her expression shifted from agonized into a sneering mask. Iain hadn’t thought her ugly before—plain, perhaps—but, at that moment, she became ugly. Fury boiled off her person like steam from a kettle and Iain recoiled, not wanting to get burned.

She noticed his reaction and laughed, the sound as nasty as the gleam in her eyes. “What? Do I scare you, boy?”

Iain felt as if she’d prodded him with a red-hot iron and he took two strides and closed the distance between them, seething at the undeserved insults and bile. He stared down at her, no idea as to what he planned to do. Not that it mattered. The second he came within reach, her hands slid up the lapels of his jacket like two pale snakes. He froze at her touch but she pushed closer.