He continued to look her way in the darkness. There had been real bitterness in her voice.
“But is he not always the wronged son of a duke?” he asked her. “Theeldestson, that is, and is he not, through seemingly suicidal acts of great derring-do, setting the world to rights and clearing his name and winning the undying love of the sweet damsel in distress, who is quite possibly a princess, and, as a final reward, being restored to his inheritance and his father’s bosom and marrying the princess and living happily ever after?”
Mrs. Ferby snorted again. “One must give the man his due, Lavinia,” she said. “He has a sense of humor.”
“You ought to be writing for the Minerva Press,” Lady Barclay said.
He wondered if she was smiling, even if only inwardly. It would be a worthy, heroic thing to do, he thought, to make this woman laugh again as she had laughed at the Kramer house, and to make her do it again and again. Perhaps he ought to make it his life’s mission. Would it be an achievable goal, though? He half smiled in the darkness. Sometimes one wondered where such absurd fancies came from. He must still be horribly bored.
According to the older ladies, it was dreadfully late when they arrived home. According to the grandfather clock in its splendid old case in the hall, it was not quite eleven o’clock. Percy bade the ladies good night, ascertained from Crutchley that a fire had been lit in the library, and took himself off there for a read and a drink before going to bed for sheer lack of anything more interesting to do.
Inevitably there were animals in the room—two cats on the hearth and Hector under the desk. Percy ignored them.
He was pouring himself some port at the sideboard when the door opened and Lady Barclay stepped inside. She had shed her cloak and bonnet and donned a woolen shawl over that fetching blue evening dress of hers. It was not elaborately styled. None of her dresses was that he had seen. They did not need to be, though. She had the most perfect figure he had ever seen. Not that anything could bemostperfect or evenmoreperfect, sinceperfectwas an absolute in itself. He could hear that explanation in the voice of one of his tutors.
“Wine?” he asked her.
“Why was Mr. Tidmouth at my house this afternoon?” she asked him. “And why were theresixworkmen with him? Why has the cost of the new roof dropped in half?”
Ah.
“Wine?” he asked again.
She took a few steps in his direction. She had come to do battle, he could see. She did not answer his question.
“Myhouse?” he said. “As inyours? I still maintain that it is mine, Lady Barclay, though you may live in it with my blessing until your eightieth year if you so choose, or your ninetieth should you live so long. After that we will renegotiate.”
“You went to see him.” She took another step closer. “You ranted at him. You threatened him.”
He raised his eyebrows. She looked rather magnificent when she was angry. Anger put some color in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes.
“Ranted?” he said faintly, closing one hand about the handle of his quizzing glass—notthe jeweled one—and raising it halfway to his eye. “Threatened? You wrong me, ma’am, I do assure you.”
“Oh.” Her eyes narrowed. “I suppose you just played haughty aristocrat.”
“Played?”Briefly he raised the glass all the way to his eye. “But what is the point of being an aristocrat, ma’am, if one cannot also play at being what one is? I do assure you, it renders rants and threats quite unnecessary. Underlings, in which category I number roofers, quite wilt in the presence of hauteur and a jeweled quizzing glass and a lace-edged handkerchief.”
“You had noright.” She had taken yet more steps closer.
“On the contrary, ma’am,” he said, “I had every right.”
He was rather enjoying himself, he realized. This was better than reading his book, which was the poetry of Alexander Pope of all things.
“It wasmybattle to fight,” she told him. “I resent your interference.”
“Despite your title, ma’am,” he said, “and the impressive fact that you are the third cousin-in-law once removed of the Earl of Hardford, you seem not to have overcome what must be Tidmouth’s total disregard for women. He undoubtedly belongs to an inferior subspecies of the human race, and one must pity his wife and daughters, if there are such persons. But the fact remains that you need his services, since he appears to have no competition for at least fifty miles around.Ineed his services too. Without them I might be doomed to having to offer you my continued hospitality here at Hardford Hall for another year or more.”
Thattook the wind out of her sails. His too, actually. He was never rude to women. Well, almost never. Only to this one woman, it seemed.
“You are no gentleman, Lord Hardford,” she said.
He might not have proved her right if she had not been close—entirely her own doing, since he had not moved an inch away from the sideboard. But shewasclose, and he did not even have to stretch his arm to the full in order to curl his hand about the nape of her neck. He did not have to bend very far forward in order to set his mouth to hers.
He kissed her.
And he did not need even the fraction of one second to know that he had made abig mistake.
From her point of view it was certainly that. She broke off the kiss after perhaps two seconds and cracked him across one cheek with an open palm.
