Beside her, he straightened to his full height. He pushed a hand through disarrayed dark hair. “They don’t, really. He simply wishes to draw them. He says if a German can do it, every Englishman ought to be able to.” He looked her up and down. “I think you’re crushing his latest attempt.”
“They’re pages. They’re already flat.” She shrugged. Might he be thinking about what she was crushing them with? “Can you draw one?”
He gave her a suspiciously bland look. “If I could draw a perfect heptadecagon with only a compass and a straightedge, I wouldn’t breathe a word of it in your father’s library.”
Liza smiled. Aside from being handsome, Lord Thomas was easy to talk to, and because they’d known each other for so long, she was permitted to speak as she chose. He never made her feel like a blathering idiot.
Well, only once, the night they’d kissed. She’d definitely been a blathering idiot that night, over three years ago, on his birthday. Though it ate away at her that he could kiss her and not remember it, she also counted herself lucky he’d been so intoxicated he didn’t. Otherwise, she would surely have lost his friendship.
A ponderous tread sounded in the hall. She hopped down. Her father was not as tolerant of her sitting atop his papers as was Lord Thomas.
The door opened to reveal her father’s broad frame. His face, flushed from the long walk down the hall to the library, broke into a jovial smile. “Liza, dear, there you are. Did you help Thomas?” He maneuvered into the room, toward the table. “You did, I see. Thank you. Never met a more disorganized mathematician. That’s a good girl. Go read on the couch. We men have ellipses to discuss.”
“Yes, Papa.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek, then headed toward the window seat and her pirates. Pirates, she knew, were like astronomers. They used the stars every night to navigate their adventures.
Liza suppressed a giggle. For the life of her, she couldn’t picture her father or Lord Thomas doing anything so spontaneous as having an adventure. She took the book, settled into the chair and folded her legs under her in an unladylike fashion. With a contented smile, she began to read to the soothing backdrop of her father’s and Lord Thomas’s voices.
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Other Books in A Lord’s Kiss Series
Last Chance for a Lord
A Lord’s Dream
Deceived by a Lord
More books by Summer Hanford
Ladies Always Shoot First Series
Captured by a Duke
To Save a Lord
One Shot for a Gentleman
Under the Shadow of the Marquess Series
The Archaeologist’s Daughter
Coming Soon
The Marriage Maker
Rules of Refinement: One Good Gentleman
The Marriage Maker Goes Undercover: My Lady of Danger
Under the Shadow of the Marquess Series
The Duke’s Widow
The False Lady
www.scarsdalepublilshing.com
About the Author
Beginning in 2014, Summer Hanford was offered the privilege of partnering with fan fiction author Renata McMann on her well-loved Pride and Prejudice variations. To date, they have over twenty popular Pride & Prejudice Fan Fiction stories available, four of which are Amazon Best Sellers. In addition to her work with McMann, Summer is branching out into writing Regency works of her own, with a novel and several short story series available from Scarsdale Publishing.
Born on a dairy farm in Upstate New York, Summer attended university for psychology and art, then went on to complete two years each of graduate and doctoral work in Behavioral Neurology. She now lives and writes in Michigan, with her wonderful husband and three obligatory, deliberately spoiled, cats. For more about Summer, visit www.summerhanford.com.