Page 49 of Engaging Sir Isaac

“Stop your teasing, Sarah Morton.” Millie lifted a cushion from the chair beside the empty hearth and threw it at Sarah’s backside. The maid giggled when it hit her and fetched it up again. “You know very well I cannot be more than friends with him. He is only a baronet. Mama would not approve.” She dropped inelegantly into the chair. “He hasn’t enough influence in Society to please her, or to help Papa.”

Sarah brushed off the cushion and brought it back to the chair, setting it in Millie’s lap. “So you don’t think he’s handsome?”

Millie hugged the pillow to her, fingers tangling in its fringed corner. “He is most handsome. I can think him handsome without being more than his friend.” He had such an engaging smile. And how safe she had felt, leaning into his embrace in the carriage.

“And you don’t think him especially noble or kind?” Sarah folded her arms and fixed Millie with a stare more appropriate to a nanny scolding a child than a servant barely a year older than her mistress.

“He is both of those things.” Millie could not deny that at all. She twisted the fringe around her fingers, still thinking of their time together in the carriage. Their fingers interlaced had made her heart dance, then tucking herself against his shoulder had been the most protected she had felt since—since before Emmeline left. “He makes me feel as though I have found shelter in a storm.”

Sarah nodded once. “I see, miss. So you’re just friends with him, because that’s how friends often feel about one another.”

“I would not know. Aside from you, I have had no friends since my sister left.” She smiled fondly at her maid, lest Sarah think any insult was meant. It was more than a little unusual for a woman to befriend her maid or trust her so well. “I have been thinking about Emmeline a great deal of late.” Bringing up her sister would decidedly move the topic of conversation away from any affectionate feeling she had for Isaac.

“Quite natural, I’m sure.” Sarah fetched her mending basket and took out the nearly finished lace collar. The intricate work required time and signaled that Sarah had no intention of helping Millie dress for dinner. Good. Millie could avoid the viscount and Mr. Weston, as well as Lady Olivia.

“I only wonder if Emmeline is well.” Millie pulled the pillow tighter to her chest, staring at nothing as she remembered her sister. Emmeline had always shone like the sun, brightening every room she entered. She had the perfect golden curls, eyes so blue one felt that they had stolen their color from the sky. Emmeline hadn’t been as short as Millie and had the more desired, willow-like figure of a sylph.

She had always treated Millie kindly, too. Like a friend as much as like a sister. They had told each other everything. Emmeline had been eighteen years old when the viscount proposed. Papa and Mama had been shocked, honored, and hastily agreed to the match.

Perhaps too hastily.

“For years I have been so angry with her,” Millie whispered, more to herself than to Sarah. “But I cannot find it in me to be angry anymore. Especially after seeing the viscount again.” She shuddered and tucked her feet onto the chair beneath her. “Imagine how horrid a life she would have had, married to him.”

“It’s wise to think on that.” Sarah cocked an eyebrow upward but did not take her eyes from her delicate work. “My mam always told us that you can’t change a person, no matter how you try. If she’d have married the viscount, he’d be as horrid to her as he was to you. I feel sorry for his poor wife.”

“She does appear a rather downtrodden creature.” Millie kept the pillow in place and took up a book from the small table beside her chair. It was nothing more than a collection of poetry, and not by a poet she recognized. It seemed anyone who wished could get a book published. “If Lady Olivia found my sister, I would like to know where Emmie is, and how she is getting on with her husband. I wonder if she has children. I might be an aunt and not even know it.”

“More’s the pity, miss.” Sarah shook her head, true sympathy in her tone. “But it’s good you’re thinking on it at all. Maybe you should ask Lady Olivia where your sister is.”

“She would never tell me.”

“Then maybe you ought to see if you can find out in another way.” Sarah said the words slowly, each dripping with hidden meaning. “Maybe that’s how you can take care of that Mr. Weston. Perhaps some spying is in order, miss.”

Millie went cold. “Do you mean violate their privacy? Search their things?”

Sarah put on a rather crooked smile. “Or find a servant what would do it for a price. There are more’n a few in this house not paid a fair wage. I imagine I could find someone to help.”

“That is a dangerous suggestion.” Millie turned the idea over in her mind. “But not without merit. I will put the idea to Isaac. I have bungled everything so far. I do not trust my own judgement.”

Sarah’s grin widened. “Ah. Sir Isaac would be the perfect person to ask. It’s the best excuse I ever heard for meeting with a handsome—”

Millie’s pillow, tossed by the blushing woman at the maid, halted Sarah’s sentence. But it did nothing to stop the way her stomach flipped and turned when she thought of Sir Isaac’s incredible kiss. It was a shame he’d only meant to teach her a lesson by it.

As complicated as her situation was, Millie could not help but entertain the tiniest hope that perhaps there were other lessons he wished to teach her that ended in a kiss.

Chapter 17

Drumming his fingers on the desk before him, Isaac glared down at the letters on the shiny, oak surface. The letters themselves were not particularly offensive. But Isaac’s thoughts had wandered far from their words to those Millie had shared with him in the carriage the day before.

On a mission to elevate her family, saving them from the fall they had suffered after the viscount turned against them, Millie had made poor choices. He did not deny that. Nor did he condone it. But when she had come to the realization of her folly, had tried to correct it, she had been trapped into her agreement with Lady Olivia and her cronies.

A way to help her had to exist. If he could settle on the right course of action, he could free her from the agreement. Grace Barnes would know what to do. The woman was a natural strategist. But Isaac had made a promise which prohibited him from speaking to any of his friends of the trouble Millie faced.

He pushed away from the desk, taking a book from its surface with him. Isaac went to the bookshelves and returned the book to its place.

A knock at the door made him turn, almost with gratitude, to answer. “Come.”

The butler entered the room and bowed. “Sir. A Miss Wedgewood to see you.”