“Have you perused my notes?” she asked, assessing him in that frank manner she had. Utterly guileless.
Maddening, really.
The woman before him was no lady. If Great Aunt Hortense had not been dining that evening with the ladies of her beloved hospital charity, she would have been properly horrified by Miss Montgomery’s manners. Of course, she would also be horrified to know he was dining alone with an unwed female. But he would deal with his aunt’s indignation later, when the time came. Procrastination was his favorite form of art when it came to the beloved dragon.
For now, back to Miss Montgomery’s notes.
“I have read a portion of them,” he told her, having no intention of discussing the matter over the next remove while a servant hovered. “They are…copious.”
In truth, he had not perused them beyond the initial glance he had cast over them earlier during their awkward interview. And he had no intention of reading them either, for he was not about to share his duties with Miss Montgomery. Indeed, the mere notion of seeing the frothy tiers of her silken skirts as she entered a carriage on her way back to America filled him with a searing sense of satisfaction.
“Copious,” she repeated now, disrupting his fantasy of her exodus.
“Would you prefer voluminous?” he asked, as the next dishes were laid before them.
The urge to discomfit her, to ruffle her feathers, could not be dismissed. Even if he had no intention of working alongside her, he could not deny a part of him found her an oddity. Intriguing, even.
“They are detailed and rife with important information,” she informed him coolly, before turning her attention to the dish before her and attacking it just as surely as she had herharicot verts.
The remainder of the dinner continued in polite silence. When the dessert course had been whisked away, Lucien dismissed the footman, leaving himself and Miss Montgomery alone in the drawing room. It was deuced odd, sharing the table with a female other than his aunt and his sister, Violet. But Violet was now the Duchess of Strathmore and damned unlikely to be sharing his table any time soon, thanks to The Incident. He sipped his port, drowning the disagreeable thought with spirits, an ineffective panacea though it was.
Miss Montgomery had accepted port and had remained at the table along with him, as if she too were a gentleman. She watched him now, that icy gaze of hers assessing. “You did not read my journal, did you?”
The warmth which had begun to unfurl within him from the port died. Blast the woman. He took another sip, returning her regard frankly.
“No.”
Her lips compressed. “Nor do you have any intention of reading it.”
The last was a statement rather than a question. She seemed an intelligent woman. Indeed, if the list of successful cases she had completed was an indication, she was quite smart. Therefore, he would not prevaricate.
“No.” He savored another sip of port.
Her spine stiffened, her eyes blazing with irritation. “Do you doubt my abilities because I am a woman, Mr. Arden?”
Again with the bloodymisternonsense.
He sighed. “You may call me Arden, madam.”
“I do believe I already informed you the circumstances required for me to refer to you by your silly title.”
He placed his glass on the table with more force than necessary, the sound echoing through the chamber. “Need I remind you that you are a guest in my home, madam?”
“What has that got to do with me calling you Mr. Arden?” she returned.
He ground his molars. The woman certainly knew how to goad him. “If I did not respect you, I would not be seated here at the table with you now. I would not have seen you comfortably settled in a guest chamber for the evening nor provided you with an attendant. I would not have listened to you natter through the soup course.”
“I did not speak a word during the soup course.”
Perhaps she had not. His mind was heavy with troubles, and the vexing female before him was the last complication he needed to add to his burdens. All he knew was, at some point, she had returned to the topic of her damnable journal once more, and they had not left it ever since.
He frowned. “You may as well have. Your eyes speak for you.”
That much was true. Her unusual light-blue gaze was everywhere, always observing, and seeing far too much, he had no doubt.
“What a strange man you are, Mr. Arden,” she said, her tone contemplative.
He bristled. “You will call me Arden, madam, or I shall throw you over my shoulder and cart you to the carriage myself.”
