Excerpt: Stolen Goods

Chapter One: Beauté et la Bête Stupide
The carriage rocked and bounced along the bumpy road, inside Lady Bonnie Dubois was getting mildly frustrated. The man she sat with was one of her prospective, and most likely, suitors. She disliked him immensely, and would’ve liked nothing better than to boot him out and into the woods.

“You can’t denounce all criminals, Lord Martin. Some are forced into the life of crime by poverty and other such tragedies.” Bonnie said, entirely sick of the man’s stubborn black and white outlook on life.

“That does not absolve them of their guilt though, it does not matter what the reason for committing a crime is, the only that matters is that the crime has been committed. They are criminals, Lady Bonnie, and should be punished as such.” Lord Elijah Martin replied, thinking he’d charmed his way into Bonnie’s heart long ago with his masculine ideas and corrections of her flawed logic. Not just any woman could earn the honor of being corrected by his manly self, it took a special kind. They had to be rich, and worth all the boring wooing and correcting. It was just a plus that Bonnie didn’t look like a pig.

“I could argue with you all day, but since I see an imbécile sitting before me, I can easily see that such a thing would be a great folly. Now, if you don’t mind I’d like to enjoy a bit of silence, vous homme stupide! ” Voice dripping in restrained ice, Bonnie scooted gracefully over to the other side of the carriage, while at the same time wondering how she could spend a moment longer with such a fool. Hoping to discourage anymore pointless and infuriating conversation, Bonnie pulled her poetry book out of her bag, and angled her body toward the window. Her nose was soon buried in the lyrical lilt of prose and poems.

Elijah couldn’t have been happier, she’d already revealed her mother tongue to him, and it sounded as if she had already given him a loving nickname! Oh, they’d be married within a month if he had any say in the matter, which, of course, he did. He looked her over again, thinking that the sunlight that silhouetted her looked rather dashing. She was rather nice, with long brown hair, and deep brown eyes to match. Elijah quite liked things that matched. Her figure wasn’t exactly the stylish petite, but maybe he could discreetly tell her later to lay off of the cakes? She would undoubtedly appreciate his forthright honesty, all women seemed to. If she did that then maybe she wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye, he had heard about that, how woman lost their height when they lost their weight.

There was also the matter of her books. He didn’t mind it, that Lady Bonnie Dubois seemed to be a bit of librarian at times, but there were certain books that she would just have to stop reading. The nonsensical poetry she was reading at the moment was fine, but he’d have to put an end to the politics, economy, and other such manly books that he had heard she often read. It was positively unseemly. No matter, Bonnie would probably fall upon his feet when he told her of this, it was the type of thing women did in his mannish presence.

Bonnie wrinkled her nose, not enjoying the feel of eyes upon her. The hair at the nape of her neck stood on end, and her poetry was doing nothing to help her. Angry that she couldn’t get away from the ape of a man even with the aid of a book, Bonnie couldn’t help but to snap, “Mon Dieu! Would you stop looking at me, stupide! Vous morceau horrible de-“