'Twas the Night After Christmas by Sabrina Jeffries Page A

Lord Rochester’s poems. So how did you get them?”
    Heat rose in her cheeks. “I didn’t. Not exactly. When I served as paid companion to an elderly lady with a bachelor grandson, he gave me free access to his library, which contained a few . . . questionable books of verse.”
    “That you decided to read?”
    She scowled at him. “I didn’t know they were questionable until I read them, now, did I? And I happen to like verse. I’d read some of Lord Rochester’s more respectable poems, and I never guessed—”
    “That he was such a naughty boy?”
    “Exactly.” Her tone turned arch. “Apparently you’re not the only lord out there who’s a naughty boy.”
    “We do get around.” He took another sip of brandy, then eyed her seriously over the rim of his glass. “And speaking of that—did this bachelor with the vulgar library ever behave as a naughty boy to you ?”
    “No more than you have.”
    “I’ve been a perfect gentleman to you. For me, anyway.”
    “Trying to blackmail me into your bed and then asking me to read naughty literature to you is not gentlemanly.”
    “But it’s certainly entertaining,” he pointed out.
    She rolled her eyes. “To answer your question, the bachelor grandson never laid a hand on me. For one thing, he lived in terror that his grandmother, my employer, would cut him off. For another, he had no time for me. He spent it all courting women with large fortunes.”
    “Ah. Why did you leave?”
    “His grandmother died.” Camilla had been torn between dismay and relief. She hadn’t wanted to look for a new post, but neither had she wanted to continue with the miserly and highly critical Lady Stirling. “He wasn’t nearly as bad as the man who employed me next, as companion to his widowed sister. He wanted her to marry a rich marquess twice her age in order to gain him an entrée into White’s and further his political career.”
    “And did he succeed?”
    She smirked at him. “She ran off with his best friend. And he couldn’t blame me for it, since he was the one who’d thrown them together.” Her smile faded. “Unfortunately, he also no longer had any need for my services, which is how I ended up here.”
    He drank more brandy. “I keep forgetting this isn’t your first post. Indeed, that’s why I was so surprised to see how young you are.”
    “I’m not all that young. I’m nearly twenty-eight.”
    “A greatly advanced age indeed,” he said sarcastically.
    “Only three years younger than you,” she pointed out.
    One corner of his mouth quirked up. “True. But it’s different for a man. We see more of the world in thirty-one years than a woman sees in a lifetime.”
    “Trust me, I’ve seen plenty enough of the world at my age.”
    He fell silent, his brow pursed in thought. “Twenty-seven. And you had two posts before this. You must have married very young.”
    That observation put her on her guard. “I was old enough.”
    “How old?”
    “Why do you care?”
    “You work for me. I have a right to know more about your circumstances.” When she bristled, he softened his tone a fraction. “Besides, why should your age at marrying be such a secret? Were you ten and sold off from the orphanage to a ninety-year-old fellow with gout?”
    “Don’t be ridiculous. I was nineteen. And the orphanage was perfectly respectable. Indeed, I stayed there to work until I married.”
    “Ah. So you met your husband there.”
    “Yes,” she said warily, not sure she wanted to talk about Kenneth with him . “He used to perform religious services for the children, and I would help him.”
    “And he fell in love.” His voice was almost snide. When she hesitated a bit too long in answering, he added, “Or not.”
    Uncomfortable with his probing, she rose and went to the bookcase. “Perhaps you’d like me to read another book.”
    Setting down his glass, he rose, too. “You don’t wish to talk about your marriage. I wonder why.”
    She faced him with a