How odd.
“This is beneath you,” she continued.
Now he was actually growing concerned. “You think that this is beneath me?”
“Of course it is,” she huffed. “Tutoring young ladies? Getting paid for it? It’s...unseemly.”
“How kind of you to worry about my reputation.”
She rolled her eyes at his dry tone. “I’m not worried about you.”
He could practically see her scrambling for an excuse. “I’m worried about your uncle’s good opinion, that is all. Surely he cannot approve of this new business you’ve gone into—”
“On the contrary. He’s relieved to find that I have some ambition, after all. This all started because he cut me off, you know—”
“No!” Her gaping stare was nicely shocked.
“Yes. He and all the other upright morally superior stuffed-shirts of the ton have decided that my new pastime is one to be commended.” He made a show of rolling his hand as he bowed low. “A youthful rake making amends for his past misdeeds...at your service.”
He heard a choking sound. A scoff, no doubt. He looked up, ready to find a sneer on her face.
He felt as though he’d been smacked upside the head to discover a genuine smile instead. It faded quickly as she looked away but for a moment there...for just a second he’d thought…
Had he made her laugh?
The surge of triumph was bizarre and completely out of proportion to the situation. And yet, he couldn’t deny the heady pleasure of having once—finally—made priggish Pru laugh.
“So you’ve managed to convince your uncle that you have reformed then?” she asked.
He shrugged. If this was anyone else talking he would have lied. He would have spun a tale about how he had indeed seen the errors of his ways after his years of carousing with other young gentlemen of the ton, spending too much money for the pleasure of drinking and dining and gambling.
But truth be told, he did not regret those activities. Nor did he feel wrong for being a man of leisure. It was merely that he’d grown bored with it, that was all. “My uncle is hardly suffering some mistaken assumption about my basic character.”
“And what is that, exactly?” She rested a hand on her waist and jutted a hip out to the side. He knew she was not trying to appear enticing...but she still succeeded.
He looked away quickly, temporarily stunned into stupidity over the thought that he had just been ogling Prudence Pottermouth, the world’s least appealing female.
He glanced back. Or, at least, she had been. At what point had that changed?
She was waiting for an answer and he shook off all thoughts of distraction. What was his true character? Well, she ought to know better than anyone. “Why, I’m a knave, of course.”
He gave her his best wicked grin and got a sneer in response.
This was more like it. Enemies to the end. Her sneers were far more familiar and put him back on even footing.
“If you’re still such a scoundrel then why did you agree to help me?”
“For the money, of course. My uncle cut me off last year, and I’ve been paying my own way ever since.”
She blinked in surprise. “Really?”
He nodded.
“Good for him.”
A shocked laugh escaped before he could stop it. “Yes, well, now that you understand my motives and I yours—”
“What do you know of my motives?” Her eyes were narrowed with suspicion again.
He moved toward her slowly. “Tell me, did something happen to you as a child to make you so suspicious all the time?”
She sniffed. “Yes. I was forced to be playmates with a heathenous neighbor who lived to torture me.”
He started to laugh which made her eyes narrow even further.
“I developed the good sense to be wary whenever he seemed too pleased with himself.” She arched one brow. “His pleasure could only ever mean my doom.”
“Your doom!” he crowed. “Oh, I like that. A frog in your bedding could hardly be considered your doom.”
Her lips twitched and he could practically see her cataloguing his every indiscretion, ready to hurl them at him as she always did. She couldn’t bear to let an occasion pass when she could throw his bad deeds in his face.
But that was the past, and this was his present, and his future…
He gave his head a sharp shake. He had no desire to think of the future. He had a mission to complete and while willful and obstinate, he was certain he could help Miss Prudence Pottermouth.
“Your motives,” he said, bringing them back to the topic at hand. “That seems easy enough to suss out, even for one such as me.” He eyed her from head to toe, trying not to grin when her blush spread.
Blushing was new.
He liked it. It meant that while she might treat him as the boy he once was, she saw him as the man he’d become.
“You wish to marry,” he said softly. “And you are expected to marry well.”
She sniffed.
“Is it still that Benedict chap you’re set to marry?”
She pursed her lips.
His mind was racing back to the bits and pieces of gossip he’d picked up over the years. There was an understanding between the families and to be honest, he’d been surprised to find that she returned to the Dowager Demon’s house unmarried. He hadn’t given her much thought since she’d been shipped off to that finishing school years ago, but if he had he would have guessed that she’d been happily married by now.
Well, not happily.
Pru never did anything happily.
“I thought that agreement was as good as done—”
“Yes, well, apparently not.” Her voice was clipped, her lips curved up in that sneer he despised. And yet…
There was a flicker of uncertainty there that made it impossible to come back at her with a barb about how she had likely driven off the poor man.
Her gaze flickered away from his. “Aunt Eleanor fears I’m not quite…satisfactory.” Her throat worked as she swallowed and he wondered how much it pained Miss Perfect Pru to admit
