Nicola and the Viscount by Meg Cabot Page A

Hugh’s ready reply.
    â€œReally,” Nicola said, beginning to feel a bit conspicuous, as the people in the carriages behind theirs were beginning to shout things like “Get a move on!” and “Horse thrown a shoe up there?” “It’s too kind of you. But Lord Sebastian is going right home. And I am expected soon, you know. Lady Honoria and I are…are going to Grafton House to look at buttons.”
    It was a lie, of course. And not even a very original one. It was the same one she’d used with Harold. But for some reason, this time she felt guilty as she said it. Guilty? Why on earth should she feel guilty about lying to Nathaniel Sheridan? Why, he was never anything but unpleasant to her!
    The lie, much as it bothered her, seemed to do the trick, however. There really wasn’t any other way for Nathaniel to respond to it except by moving, albeit reluctantly, to help Nicola down from Sir Hugh’s curricle, and then into Lord Sebastian’s phaeton. Settled snugly onto the seat beside the God, Nicola forgot her guilt as she excitedly waved good-bye to her friends. All but Nathaniel, who was in one of his sulks, waved gaily back. And then Lord Sebastian turned the phaeton around, and they left the park for home.
    With what changed feelings did Nicola jounce along Park Lane coming home from the park than when she’d been going toward it! Then she’d been in thoroughly dejected spirits, thanks to her unwelcome company. Now she was sitting beside…well, a god. She was the envy, she knew, of every girl they passed. All of them were looking up at her, Nicola Sparks, and wondering how she’d come to have the great luck of capturing the arm of the best-looking bachelor in all of England. Well, the answer was easy enough. She’d let herself be blown about by life, like a thistle in the wind, and look what had happened!
    â€œAnd what,” the God wanted to know as they made their way toward his home, “did poor Mr. Blenkenship do to you that you felt compelled to abandon him so cruelly?”
    â€œOh,” Nicola said distractedly, as she watched the sky passing above his golden head…a sky that came nowhere near the blue of his eyes. “Asked me to marry him, is all.”
    The God seemed to find this highly amusing. He laughed and said, “A terrible crime indeed. And are you that harsh to all the supplicants for your hand, Miss Sparks? Or was Mr. Blenkenship special somehow?”
    â€œEspecially offensive, maybe,” Nicola replied, adoring the way the God’s eyelashes seemed to sparkle in the sunlight.
    â€œWell, that’s a relief, anyway,” the God said.
    â€œWhat is?” Nicola asked, dreamily imagining herself touching those eyelashes.
    â€œWell, that you aren’t opposed to marriage in general,” the God said. And suddenly, with the hand that was not holding the reins, he reached for Nicola’s fingers and brought them up toward his mouth. “That means there’s hope for me, doesn’t it?”
    For a moment, Nicola could only stare at him, hardly daring to believe what her own ears—and eyes, and fingertips, which were thrilling, inside her gloves, to the touch of his lips—were telling her.
    And then, simply and directly, he dispelled any doubts she might have had.
    â€œMarry me, Nicola?” he asked.
    And even though Madame Vieuxvincent would have disapproved heartily, Nicola threw both her arms around the God’s neck and kissed him, right there on Park Lane, in front of everyone.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    And as simply as that, Miss Nicola Sparks became engaged to Lord Sebastian Bartholomew, the Viscount Farnsworth.
    She was, to be sure, young to marry at sixteen. Yet, as Nicola was quick to point out, Juliet had been even younger when she’d married her Romeo. And Nathaniel Sheridan muttering, as he did upon hearing this, “Yes, and look how well that turned out,” did not