Gentlemen Prefer Mischief by Emily Greenwood Page A

him; he joked and teased as much as he ever had.
    “Was there some reason you came today?” she asked.
    He crossed his arms and stared down the blade of his nose at her. “What the devil are you up to?”
    “I, my lord?”
    He raised an eyebrow at “my lord.”
    She smiled, as if to indicate she had no hard feelings toward him. No feelings of any kind. A lie, but if she had an untidy residual attraction to him, along with a growing awareness that he was a very entertaining man, it was something she would conquer with no one the wiser.
    “There was no sign of the Woods Fiend last night, but you came to my room and removed something.”
    “Surely,” she said, “you’re not suggesting I’m the Woods Fiend?”
    “I’m suggesting,” he said drily, “that you’re in league with him.”
    “In league. That sounds serious.”
    He gave her a very haughty look in reply, which drew his golden brows together at bossy angles and made the planes of his face more taut in a perilously interesting way. Her imagination treated her to an image of him in his captain’s uniform, dressing down army recruits.
    “Don’t try to distract me from the issue at hand, which is people sneaking into my room at night. People like you.”
    “I, my lord? In your bedchamber? How absurd!”
    “Lily…” His voice held a note of warning.
    “Well,” she said, “if something happened to the journal in your possession last night while at the same time nothing happened in the woods, anyone would say that was merely coincidence.”
    Like reinforcements, Rosemary, who’d been wandering nearby, drew close to him and began to sniff the edge of his forget-me-not coat, while Parsley came at him from the other side; the two were invariably interested in new people. In the way of sheep, the others were not far behind. She hid a smile as he looked down to find himself surrounded.
    “The shirt I was wearing the other night,” he said as he laid a hand atop Rosemary’s cream-colored head, “still smells of violets.”
    “Violets?” Though she made her own violet water scent to keep her clothes fresh, she pretended ignorance. “I’m not certain I even knew they had a scent.”
    “They do. It comes and goes. It’s known to be exasperating.”
    Rosemary stuck out her tongue just then and licked his little finger, which drew his attention even as Parsley leaned in to him. Parsley was prone to leaning on people, and Lily liked the idea that Roxham would leave Thistlethwaite smelling of sheep. Thyme pressed forward to see what was so interesting. Roxham moved his sleeve out of the way of Parsley’s questing mouth while still pinning Lily with his eyes.
    “Roxham.” Her tone said, darling boy . “Putting aside the absurd charge of being at fault for retrieving something of my own that had been taken from me, I can assure you I am not in league with an evil spirit.”
    “Just tell me what is going on in my woods, and with whom you are working.”
    She swallowed hard at his directness, and his eyes locked on hers, as if willing her to fall apart and confess the truth.
    Ha, she was made of sterner stuff, and she held his blue-green gaze with a bland look that offered nothing. Nonetheless, the cost to her was having to absorb the full blast of Lord Perfect’s male beauty. Those thick eyelashes that gave his eyes a boyish hint of mischief…
    Buck barked sharply just then, scattering the sheep as her brother Rob came over the hill.
    “Rob! You’re back!”
    She was very, very glad for the interruption of his arrival. And glad he was home, too, of course.
    “Welcome home,” she said, embracing him.
    “It’s good to be back.” He and Roxham exchanged cordial greetings. “It’s good to see you after all this time, Hal. Delia said you were out here visiting our sheep, but I thought she was jesting.”
    His tone was friendly, but Lily could read in his eyes that he thought it odd that Roxham, with plenty of his own sheep, had come for that