How the Marquess Was Won Read Online Free PDF

paused in her glove pulling-on and stared at her with mild incredulity until Phoebe dipped a desultory curtsy in the general direction of the marquess. He returned the favor by nodding in her general direction.
    Neither of them had looked at each other.
    The marquess in fact showed no sign of being affected by her presence at all. The same suppressed impatience rolled in waves from him, the kind that made one want to shift their feet or fidget, do something, anything, as long as it was his bidding. He was casting his eyes over the furnishings of Miss Endicott’s office and lightly slapping his hat against the palm of his hand. Whap . . . whap . . . whap . As if marking off how many more precious minutes of his life he’d need to devote to his tedious visit to a school for girls.
    “I shall be grateful if you would show me a classroom, Miss Vale,” he said at last.
    He was exquisitely polite. Though he likely would have said “I should like you to stuff it, Miss Vale,” in the same tone.
    He was looking at her now.
    “I shall be happy to do it.” She could be exquisitely polite, too. Still, she directed this to his left eyebrow, to avoid looking straight into his gold eyes.
    He nodded, as if there had never been any question of this. He turned to address Miss Endicott.
    “My sincere thanks, Miss Endicott, for your time, and I hope you enjoy a safe and pleasant journey.”
    “Thank you. I expect to, Lord Dryden,” she said briskly, and no journey would ever dare defy Miss Endicott by being anything other than pleasurable or uneventful.
    So Phoebe curtsied to Miss Endicott, too, but Miss Endicott swept past her, gave her a kiss on one cheek, followed it with a little kid-clad pat as if to drive the kiss into Phoebe’s very soul, and then tugged on the bell for a footman.
    She stared after the departing headmistress.
    Phoebe supposed it was evidence of the fact that she was no longer strictly a green girl that the headmistress saw naught amiss with sending her to the upper floors alone with a handsome marquess.
    She was only twenty-two! For heaven’s sake . And in a single day she’d received a letter asking her to chaperone a girl hardly younger than she was, and had then been deemed unkissable.
    “If you would follow me, Lord Dryden.”
    She spun on her boot heels and aimed for the staircase. She was tempted to scale them two at a time, to bolt away from him. Over the years, Phoebe had learned to keep her rebellious impulses in check by shoveling in information the way one fed coal to a furnace. She was an excellent teacher, but primarily because she understood recalcitrant girls so well it bordered on unfair. Certainly she could keep those impulses in check now.
    He followed her, and in seconds was flanking her, despite her insultingly brisk pace. She sensed he was politely matching his pace to hers. He called to mind a tethered stallion who had decided to humor her with temporary docility.
    Her pace accelerated. She risked a glance over her shoulder. She saw a short white hair—his own?—clinging to the arm of his coat. For an instant it made him seem unbearably human. Accessible. An absurd notion, no doubt.
    She knew very well how to spout pleasantries and to charm. Still, she stubbornly refused to speak.
    So he did. “I’m given to understand that teachers here at the school advocate solving the problems of . . .” He was delicately searching for a word.
    “Recalcitrance?” she completed brightly.
    “. . . very well, then, recalcitrance—by filling the girls’ minds with facts?”
    Odd. He sounded . . . well, she might have said half-amused. Perhaps skeptical.
    “Engaging intellectual curiosity, Lord Dryden, and instilling intellectual discipline, keeps them too busy to misbehave. Though naturally they will try.”
    “Naturally.”
    “All, shall we say, misguided high spirits, can be transmuted into grace and confidence and respect, if such is expected of them, and such is extended to