“Whom else are you going to deal with?” she asked.
“You needn’t concern yourself.”
“How could I be less concerned could I be? Are you planning a duel?”
“No.”
“I have your word on it?”
“You doubt my word?”
“I must. My reputation hangs on a thread here.”
“Which is why we shouldn’t be alone together in this room, even with the door open. Ariana, this is all my fault—”
“No!”
“It’s my reputation that makes people think the worst.”
“Or your nature.” Ariana was aware of wild energies, ones grown from his kiss last night and her weak reactions to his dangerous appeal.
Her mother came in. “I think perhaps you should have a chaperone.”
Ariana exhaled and smiled. “You’re right, of course. I merely wish to know what Kynaston knows and what he’s going to do.”
“Perhaps it’s best to leave it in his hands, dear.”
That would be the conventional thing, but Ariana turned back to her target.
“Unwomanly,” he said, and it stung, because it was true and clearly he saw it as a mighty flaw. She didn’t relent, however. With a sigh, he said, “The newspaper editor gave me the letter that brought him the information.” He took it out of a pocket and passed it over.
Ariana unfolded it and read, grimacing at the vile words. “You’re going to find out who sent this. How?”
“Turn it over.”
She did and saw the signature. “The idiot! Mama, Lord Inching franked his anonymous letter!”
Her mother hadn’t come to look at the letter, but she did now. “What a silly man.”
“Silly? He’s done his best to ruin me, and only because I refused him a waltz.” She gave the letter back to Kynaston, glad to have the disgusting thing out of her hand. “What are you going to do?”
Some of the fury left him. “There’s the question.His small stature makes him almost untouchable by a man like me. Perhaps I should hire a tiny firebrand—”
Then Norris burst in, his banyan open over an open-necked shirt and breeches, hair on end. “What’s this I hear? You’ve created a scandal with my sister?”
“Norris!” Ariana protested. “It wasn’t his fault. It was Lord Inching.”
“Inching! That worm.”
“Whom you can touch no more than I can,” Kynaston said.
“I can step on him.”
Ariana quickly related the whole story, and then Norris had to read the letter for himself. “I have to do something.”
Ariana rescued the paper from his throttling hands.
“Violence will only put fuel on the fire,” his mother said.
