The Problem with Seduction - By Emma Locke Page 0,87
his meal at six of the clock, if I recall correctly.”
Her answering laugh crawled along his spine and reminded him too well of the previous night. “Trestin has improved in many ways since marrying my friend, but he hasn’t changed that much.”
Con rose and went around to help her with her chair, then turned back and flipped the innkeeper a coin. It felt like it lightened his pockets by half, but he tried to put it from his mind. Lord Trestin was a good sort, if Con recalled correctly. He might even accept an IOU if it came to it. But in the back of Con’s mind played the knowledge that she could afford to open a cottage for a week. Money was like air to her, a commodity she used without thinking about.
As she regaled him with a picturesque description of a place he remembered as barely more than a crofter’s hut, he realized that it wasn’t just her gobs of money that made her richer than he. She lived life, while he’d only been passing through. Had he ever done more than accept what was given to him? Her tale of the cottage restoration left him wondering. He’d tried to be useful, what with sinking his money into the schools and making the odd investment, but he’d never done more than draft a bank note.
She seized opportunity. She lived. Her situation wasn’t one most women would want, but she had friends, and even a purpose. She’d made the best of her lot and established herself at the top of her profession. What had he done, but dragged himself from one day to the next?
He wanted to be part of her vivacity. But he couldn’t, so long as he felt like a hanger-on, as he did whenever the topic of money came up. He could almost feel the handful of coins in his purse rubbing together like dry kindling.
Last night had been an aberration. He’d felt like a king for a time, but he should have known his lack of consequence would catch up to him. Her newfound adoration only magnified his shortcomings.
If she had any indication of his maudlin thoughts, she didn’t show it. She touched his hand to punctuate her sentences and granted him warm looks when he remembered to make noises at the appropriate places. Montborne’s fear that she’d been manipulating him looked ridiculous in light of her new adulation of him.
No, she wasn’t the problem. He was. If he was to continue on with her—and by God, he meant to—he must do two things to be worthy of her: find a way to be self-sufficient and prove to her that he had as much purpose in life as she did. That she could count on him…even if such a promise sent icy chills through his veins.
But that was how he’d come to be unworthy of her in the first place. He was eight and twenty years old, for God’s sake. It was time to act like a man, or else he would end up alone like his oldest brother—and despite Montborne’s protestations to the contrary, the last few months of his moping about the house belied his professed love of being unfettered.
All Con had to do was convince Elizabeth that he was more than the convenient, insolvent clod she’d needed between Captain Finn and herself. Then she’d keep looking at him with that trusting gaze and he wouldn’t feel like such a confounded fraud.
He estimated he had until the end of their holiday to improve himself. If Montborne’s experiences were representative of the whole, women were only blind to one’s faults until the novelty wore off.
He grimaced. He’d have to do better than “best his blockhead of a brother” for his sense of purpose. That was a low bar, indeed.
After another long day of being jostled, they reached Brixcombe only an hour before dinner. Elizabeth closed her pocket watch and tucked it into her reticule. Lord Trestin wouldn’t be enthusiastic about their tardiness, but it couldn’t be helped. This late in the year, the roads were in poor shape from all of travelers escaping London’s insufferable heat.
She pressed her back against the squab and brushed aside the window hanging. From his rear-facing seat across the carriage, Con watched her with open interest. She paid him no mind and craned her neck to see beyond the window. In the few months since she’d left, Brixcombe hadn’t changed a bit, but then this sleepy village nestled just