“If you can dislodge it from my neck, I would be most appreciative,” he said.
And how strange that they were speaking civilly, when not half an hour before, they had been cutting each other down and delivering verbal barbs as painful as the kitten’s claws. They had just decided to end their betrothal, an engagement they had never intended to bring to fruition anyway, and yet, they had been so very cruel. But she was the one he approached when he was dripping and bleeding.
He had come to her.
She stepped nearer, forgetting they had an audience until Melanie and Olive appeared at her shoulder.
“Pinch the kitten’s neck as her mother would do,” Olive advised, her tone no-nonsense. “Then gently remove her paws from Lord Dorset’s neck.”
“The poor darling was floating in the river when we neared the bank,” Melanie said. “Who knows how long she had been floating or where she fell in. She must have been terrified”
“I wonder where her mama is,” Charity cooed. “What a darling little beast. Oh, look at all that orange fur.”
“I hate to offer opposition, but I am reasonably certain the furred beggar is a male,” Dorset said wryly. “Most cats with his coloring are.”
“It hardly matters if he is a male or a female cat,” Clementine said, attempting to dislodge the kitten as Olive had instructed. “You are a hero, Lord Dorset. You saved him.”
Their gazes clashed and held for one soul-searing moment. “It was nothing,” he said.
She turned her attention back to the kitten, dislodging him from Dorset’s poor neck and bringing his tiny body to her bosom to cradle him against her.
“It was most certainly notnothingas you suggested,” she told Dorset. “And you are soaked. We should return to Fangfoss Manor before you contract a lung infection.”
“Careful, my lady, or I shall convince myself that is concern I hear in your voice.”
There was no mistaking the wryness in his voice.
“Of course I was concerned,” she told him quietly before thinking better of the words.
Ambrose—Dorset, she corrected herself—had been nothing short of magnificent, rushing into the water to save such a small life. And there was no doubt in her mind that if he had not rescued the kitten now clinging to her bodice, his sharp claws digging through her layers and burrowing into her corset, that the poor thing would have been swept downstream to his death.
“We wereallconcerned,” Charity said into the awkward silence which had fallen following Clementine’s stupid words. “You are, just as Tiny said, a hero, Lord Dorset. The kitten would never have survived if you had not risked yourself to save her.”
“Tiny?” Dorset asked, raising a brow.
“My sobriquet for Lady Clementine,” Charity explained, giving Clementine a surreptitious wink.
Lovely. Thank you for your help, Charity.
All she needed was for the Marquess of Dorset to begin calling her Tiny. Clementine sent her friend a pointed look.
But Charity was already gazing in Viscount Wilton’s direction once more. Interesting, that. They seemed true opposites. Clementine was sure his lordship would swallow his tongue if he ever discovered Charity preferred to eschew her drawers in the summer months. And that she had kissed a footman—with tongue—when she was fifteen. And that she had posed nearly nude for a portrait…
“Ah,” was all the marquess said, before casting a look around him at the riverbank, where he had abandoned his shoes, coat, and waistcoat before rushing into the river.
“You are indeed the gentleman of the hour,” Wilton drawled, before securing Dorset’s discarded garments and handing them to him.
“It was nothing,” Dorset repeated as a sudden gust of wind tore through the river valley.
The wind was rather chilly, and it left Clementine feeling cool despite the sun. She could only imagine what Dorset must be experiencing, drenched as he was.
“We should all return to Fangfoss Manor,” Clementine said, still cradling the kitten, her eyes lingering upon the marquess.
But he studiously avoided her gaze.
What a miserable discovery to make, these unwanted, impossible feelings for him.
Especially now that it was too late.
