Douglas: Lord of Heartache Read Online Free PDF Page A

was that attentive to his infernal manners. He stood in the doorway, unwilling even to enter the room without her permission, a punctilio that struck Gwen as more stubborn than considerate.
    “My lord, shall we be seated?”
    Amery held her chair for her, blast him, and waited for Gwen to serve him.
    Something in her expression must have betrayed her feelings, for Amery sighed as he spread his serviette on his lap. “Madam, you cannot be bristling and cringing every time I am in the same room. If it’s that difficult for you to be in my company, I will withdraw my request for your assistance.”
    Gwen considered him and considered his point. She had spent the entire morning mentally castigating him for a lack of warmth, but perhaps she was guilty in some regard of a lack of… hospitality.
    A lack of nerve.
    “Please help yourself, my lord,” she said, indicating a towering plate of sandwiches. “I decided informal fare would better suit a productive luncheon conversation.”
    He plucked a sandwich at random from the tray. “I appreciate that I have raised an awkward topic, Miss Hollister, but you are prevaricating.”
    She was. Where to begin?
    He tore into his sandwich—no prevarication there.
    “I am out of the habit of allowing men into my… into proximity with me. My cousin Andrew is the only fellow who does not respect my wishes in this regard, and I must tolerate him.”
    Amery reached for the teapot and poured for them both. “In that case,” he said, adding sugar to his tea, “you must simply add me to the appallingly short list of men you tolerate. Sugar?”
    She took the sugar bowl from him. “I can fix my own tea, thank you very much.”
    “And you can learn to tolerate me,” he said, sipping his tea.
    Gwen stirred cream and sugar into her favorite cup rather vigorously. “Why can’t you learn to keep your distance from me?”
    He sipped his tea again, and yet Gwen had the sense all his monumental calm hid a volcano of impatience, waiting to erupt and spew masculine indignation all over her.
    “I could learn to keep my distance from you, of course, Miss Hollister. My proximity to you is a function of courtesy and expedience, it being inconvenient to learn husbandry of the land from you exclusively by post, and I having been raised with the manners of a gentleman. Why can’t you use me as an opportunity to reacquaint yourself with the harmless exponents of my gender?”
    Gwen snorted. “Your gender has no harmless exponents, yourself included.” She chose a sandwich from the opposite side of the tray from where he’d taken his.
    His lordship put down his teacup and regarded her with an intensity that made Gwen wish she could bolt out of her chair and hide in the attics as Rose did when she’d misbehaved.
    “What?” she asked, not liking his silence or his perusal.
    “Whoever he was,” Amery said at length, “I believe I must stand in line behind your cousins should an opportunity arise to shoot the bastard—pardon my language. Eat your sandwich,” he added. “You must be famished after the morning we put in.”
    She was. She was also too unsettled to eat, and Amery was too perceptive.
    Gwen put her sandwich on her plate and addressed herself to it. “This simply isn’t going to work.”
    Amery, who was halfway through his second sandwich, returned that unnerving blue-eyed regard to her.
    “We have to make it work, Miss Hollister. Here.” He took her hand in his, lacing their fingers. Because they were at table, neither wore gloves. Gwen just had time to be shocked at his boldness—and to notice that he had a warm, steady grip—when he extricated his hand from hers. “Now what was so terrible about that? Eat your sandwich.”
    Gwen couldn’t imagine consuming anything while this man was, was… touching her. Bothering her. His hands were warm, elegant, strong, and… too strong.
    “It wasn’t terrible,” she said, though if she’d been asked, she might have admitted to