“Who,” he managed to ask, “was that little thief?”
Lady Clementine and Miss L’arbre exchanged a telling glance.
“I haven’t any idea,” they said in unison.
Suspicion flared. He would be willing to wager his country seat they were both lying. “Whoever he is, when you see him, tell him I expect him to return my hat forthwith. It is a favorite of mine.”
Lady Clementine pinned him with a glare. “You announced to the house party that we arebetrothedand your greatest concern is your hat?”
He returned her stare with a glower of his own. “I just purchased it.”
Also, it was a deuced handsome hat.
“You are not betrothed?” Miss L’arbre intervened.
“We are,” he informed their chaperone.
At the same moment, Lady Clementine announced, “We most certainly arenot.”
“Oh.” The scholarly miss blinked, the effect looking almost owlish behind her spectacles. “I own, I did wonder. You had seemed quite taken with the Duke of Cashingham after his brief visit just after our arrival, with nary a word of the marquess.”
Lady Clementine was taken with the Duke of Cashingham? For a reason Dorset could not define, the knowledge irked him.
“Olive, you know I have no desire to marry anyone,” said Lady Clementine. “The duke is merely handsome. And aduke.”
“And handsome,” Miss L’arbre added, as if Lady Clementine had not already said so.
The two ladies sighed in unison.
And what was the matter with a marquess? Himself, for instance? Not that he wished to attract the attention of any unwed lady—especially Lady Clementine—but Dorset could not deny he was left feeling rather put out by this discussion.
“The Duke of Cashingham did not carry you in his arms for a whole hectare because you had been stung by a bee,” he informed Lady Clementine. “To say nothing of this entire affair having been caused by your own foolishness. First in wearing that ridiculous garb and then in strutting about a garden without the proper undergarments.”
Lady Clementine pursed her lips. “It was scarcely any distance from the gardens to here, and I never asked you to carry me.”
“Oh dear,” Miss L’arbre was saying, sounding dismayed and scandalized all at once, “you did not allow Charity to persuade you—”
“Yes,” Lady Clementine interrupted, her cheeks flushing beet-red. “I did. Do not look at me so, Olive.”
The effect should not have made his cock twitch to life in his trousers. Truly, he despised her. But he was also a man. And it turned out that a certain portion of his anatomy did not mind whom the glimpse of forbidden flesh he had spied earlier belonged to.
Down, old chap. We have a more than trustworthy hand to aid our cause.
“I have caught my breath,” he announced with grim intent. “Let us carry on.”
The sooner he deposited Lady Clementine at the door to her chamber, where she could become someone else’s problem, the better. He did not know why he had volunteered himself for this painful act of gallantry. But now that he had, he meant to see it through.
“I told you that I shall walk,” the lady in question said, her countenance mulish. “Olive will accompany me. Will you not, dear friend?”
Miss L’arbre’s brows raised. “Of course I will, but if you are in pain, perhaps you should accept Lord Dorset’s offer of aid.”
“I shall survive,” Lady Clementine declared. “Anything to hasten Lord Dorset’s return to the other houseguests so that he may explain he was only joking when he announced we would be married.”
Perversely, the more agitated she became by his nonsensical ramblings earlier, the more pleased he found himself. Initially, he had offered the explanation in the interest of blunting scandal and gossip, with the idea they could easily extricate themselves from their “betrothal” before the house party’s end. But he could not deny there was something remarkably delicious about watching Lady Clementine squirm, caught in one of her own snares for the first time.
“I will do nothing of the sort,” he told her, then promptly swept her back into his arms before she could offer further protestation.
“Put me down, you barbarian!”
