∞∞∞
Phoebe cleared her throat. Again. She’d done it rather a lot in the twenty minutes they’d occupied the table, and even the very first one had grated upon Chris’ nerves. This one had clearly scraped clean across his last one until the simmering fury erupted at last.
He slammed his fist upon the table, and the silverware setting laid out before him jumped and clattered. “What is itthistime?”
“That’s your fish fork.” Delicately, Phoebe touched the very corner of her napkin to her lips in a dry, dainty pat.
“What’s the damned problem with it, then?”
“We’re eating salad.”
“Then what is the damned fish fork doing here?” With a sour grumble, he clenched the fork in his hand in a sort of mulish rebellion she might have expected from a very young child—or a very ill-behaved and surly man. “Either serve me fish or take the fucking fork away.”
Patiently, Phoebe made a steeple of her fingers, eyeing him with speculation. “It’s a simple matter to give commands within your own home,” she said. “But you will find it a difficult task to give them in someone else’s.”
“Not so difficult as you might think,” he said, as if he had taken the words for a challenge instead of the rebuke they had been meant to be.
“You wanted my help,” she said. “So here. I am helping. This is part of it.”
“This is damned ridiculous. It’s only silverware. Too bloody much of it.”
“Be that as it may,” she drawled, stretching the syllables outin an effort to convey her own thinning patience, “a child in the nursery is capable of learning this much. We’ve a dinner party to attend a week from today—”
“What? I’ve seen no such invitation.”
“It was tendered in person. I accepted on both our behalves.” And as relieved as she had been that she had not suddenly become a social pariah, she did not flatter herself that the invitation had been offered with the intention to confer any sort of approval. Rather, it was a trial; a throwing down of a gauntlet. She had, in the eyes of society, married beneath her, and now those who had once been her social equals were keen to find out for themselves exactlyhowfar beneath her. “This is what you wanted, is it not?” she inquired as she selected the salad fork and poked the tines through the crisp watercress upon her plate.
“I suppose,” he said gruffly, reaching for one of his utensils.
Phoebe cleared her throat and pursed her lips.
“What is itthistime?” Glacial blue eyes speared her from across the table, practically daring her to find fault with his choice.
She lifted her chin, unintimidated. “That is your dinner fork. You want the salad fork, the one at the outermost edge. When in doubt, work your way from the outside in.”
Finally he selected the proper fork and stabbed at the salad upon his plate with something akin to misdirected fury.
“They will be expecting you to fail,” she said amiably. “Our hosts, I mean to say. They will assume you will fall short of expectations, to give them some gossip to chew upon and bandy about. You may find these things—the correct fork; the proper forms of address; the placement of your napkin—to be beneath your consideration. But to these people, these things matter. You cannot beg, borrow, steal, or threaten to obtain social acceptance. You must achieve it in the proper fashion, which means your manners must be above reproach.”
“Nothing about me is above reproach,” he said irritably. “Your sort resents the very blood in my veins.”
“Yes, well, I don’t find certain prejudices particularly fair either,” she said, with a roll of her wrist which prompted a footman into action to remove the salad and another to bring the next course. “Perhaps it will comfort you that you are hardly the only one in this household to undergo rigorous training.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He cast a sour glance at the footman who whisked his plate away. “And who the hell are you?”
“I’ve borrowed a few of my parents’ servants for the time being,” Phoebe said. “Regrettably, Brooksisthe only employee at present who seems to know the workings of his vocation.”
“I’ve got enough servants,” Chris grumbled.
“You would have,” she acknowledged, “ifthey knew their duties. But as they do not, there are countless tasks going undone or underdone. As it is, I shall have to find a few new employees regardless. A gardener, a lady’s maid, a valet—”
“I don’t want a damned valet!” The shout reverberated throughout the dining room, bouncing off of walls, splintering through the hanging crystal drops of the chandelier above the table, and echoing within Phoebe’s ears.
She planted her palms upon the surface of the table, rising to her feet in a smooth surge. “What youwant,” she said, in crisp, precise, frosty tones, “is immaterial. What youneedis what is at issue. Your hair is too long; your clothes out of fashion and you do not wear them comfortably besides. You look like you haven’t shaved in at least a day, and I would not be in the least surprised if you were to tell me you’d last bathed in winter.”
Blond brows gained increasing height as she spoke, rising over blue eyes that had gone from furious to nearly awed in the space of a few seconds. Probably, she thought, no one had ever spoken to him in quite such a manner before now. Probably noone had dared.
“Do you know,” he said slowly. “I’m not certain whether you are very brave or very stupid.”
