“I’m happy to teach you a lesson,” she murmured, and played her next card. “I hope you learn it this time.”
Reuben frowned. “He of the dense tomes, remember? This old dog is capable of new tricks.”
“Then don’t you want something else from your life? Or do you imagine yourself forty years from now, a lecherous old roué, hobbling about ballrooms with a cane and a quizzing glass, squinting lustfully after the newest crop of blushing misses in pastel gowns?”
That did not sound flattering… or fulfilling.
“First of all,” he informed her, “Forty years from now, fashions will have changed, and young misses might no longer be decked in insipid pastels.”
“Very true.” She matched a trio of twos. “I stand corrected.”
“Secondly, I shall not at that future time, nor do I now, angle after debutantes of any flavor.”
She met his eyes. “Have you never?”
Instantly, his mind flooded with memories of a night long ago, when he’d grabbed the wrong woman in a statue garden and wondered if she’d been the right one after all. But of course she hadn’t. Less than an hour after kissing Reuben, he’d learned Alsop had already claimed her. No matter how hard Reuben tried to forget her, the news that Alsop had wed made the rounds less than a month later.
At least Reuben had managed to avoid running into the happy couple in the years since.
But all he said aloud was, “I have done my best to make my dishonorable intentions clear, and to keep the company of those whose interest in passing pleasures aligns with my own.”
“That is what they say,” she agreed, and played her next card. “Don’t you tire of being gossiped about?”
He shrugged. “The gossips do half of my work for me. The marriageable young misses know to stay away, and the adventuresome lasses with no reputation to mind know just where to find me.”
Gladys nodded. “At home. Reading a book.”
“You like to read, too,” he pointed out.
“I love to read. I’m not ashamed of it in the least. I intend to spend the rest of my life reading as many lurid novels as humanly possible.”
“That’s not lonely?”
“I’m never alone. I inhabit the same worlds as the characters. Also I have a cat. Count Whiskers is never far from my lap.”
Reuben could just imagine. “Where is Count Whiskers now? In your room?”
“In London,” she said with a sigh. “He doesn’t travel well, so I was forced to leave him at home. A friend is taking care of him.”
A frisson of jealousy rippled through him. “A female friend?”
Gladys arched her brows. “No. Is there a question you’d like to ask me?”
“Yes,” he blurted out. “Are you romantically involved with someone else?”
“Else?” she repeated drolly. “No, I’m not involved with anyone romantically.”
Well, he’d deserved that, hadn’t he? After all his insisting that he was a gluttonous rake with the attention of a gnat and no interest in marriage, he could hardly blame her for not finding his attentions particularly romantic.
And yet, what other explanation did he have for his behavior this past week? Every thought had been of her, every action calculated to find her, to please her, to care for her.
But how was she supposed to know all that, if he didn’t tell her?
“I…” he began, and hesitated.
Tell her what, exactly? Was that not the question she was asking him? What his intentions were toward her, if not purely carnal?
“I’d like to meet Captain Whiskers,” he managed.
