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"Uncivil?" Miss Marshall looked about the roo very civil, Mr Clark Very welco to you Stephen and I don’t tell lord jokes around just anyone"

Stephen leaned in "As a fine point," he pretended to whisper, "I don’t tell lord jokes around Lady Amanda She’s a halfway decent sort It’s not her fault her father’s a marquess"

"Yes," Miss Marshall put in darkly "It was hera lord H to tella lord when you were young? That you didn’t play at being a lady, i what it would be like to be waited on hand and foot? I thought every little girl with any inclination at all tothe eye of a lord"

"God, no" She looked horrified "Farirls who catch the eye of a lord don’t end up nant No When I was a girl, I wanted to be a pirate"

That brought up an all-too-pleasant ie--Miss Marshall, the rich, dark red of her hair unbound and flying defiantly in the wind aboard a ship’s deck She’d wear a loose white shirt and pantaloons He would definitely surrender

"I aine," Edward heard himself say "Entirely unshocked"

She smiled in pleasure

"A bloodthirsty cutthroat profession? Good thing you gave that up It would never have suited you"

Her expression of pleasure dimmed

"You’d have succeeded too easily," Edward continued, "and now you’d be sitting, bored as sin, atop a heap of gold too large to spend in one lifetih, wouldn’t it solve ever so many problems if you ain if you did"

Stephen’s eyes narrowed at that Miss Marshall’s expression changed fro, asking her about e He wasn’t a damned viscount He refused to be one And whatever odd flutterings he s he had harbored, he wasn’t going to , too While he hadn’t been paying attention, his ht-have-been, a world where he’d never been cast out, where he’d never had to make his heart as black and hard as coal If he’d been Edward Delacey, he ht Edward Delacey, dead fool that he was, could have had the one thing that Edward Clark never would

Miss Marshall snorted "God, no," she said with a roll of her eyes "I’d rather carry a cutlass"

"Ah, but think of the advantages"

"What advantages?" She looked around her "I’ve built so here It’s a business that is not just for women, but for all women We print essays from women ork fourteen hours a day in thea woive this up to plan dinner parties?"

Like this--intense and serious--she was even more beautiful than before She tossed her head, and he wanted to grab hold of her and kiss her

It wasn’t as if he wanted toso pere, he was sure, would have been able to woo her It had been a strange sort of coh he couldn’t have her as hiht have accomplished it

But there they were Edward Clark, liar and blackmailer extraordinaire, had a better shot at Frederica Marshall than Viscount Claridge It was the worst of his damned luck that they happened to be the sa to come up with an answer by Stephen