Tristan Carroway, Viscount Dare, looked up from the London Times as the brass knocker banged against his front door. The price of barley was falling again, just two months short of when Dare’s summer crop would be ripe.
He sighed. The losses would probably wipe out the profit he’d managed to wring from the late-spring harvest. It was time for another meeting with his solicitor, Beacham, about selling to the American market.
The knocker sounded again. “Dawkins, the door,” Tristan called, taking a swallow of hot, strong coffee. At least one good thing had come out of the Colonies. And with the prices he paid for their coffee and tobacco, they should be able to afford his damned barley.
As the rapping sounded once more, he folded the paper and stood. Dawkins’s eccentricities were amusing, but the butler had best be polishing the silver somewhere and not sleeping in one of the sitting rooms, as the old fellow had an alarming tendency to do. As for the rest of the servants, they no doubt had their hands full with his entire family in residence. Either that, or they’d all fled without bothering to give notice.
With the way his luck had been running lately, a herd of solicitors and dunners probably waited at the door to take him into custody for unpaid bills. “Yes?” he said, pulling it open. “What—”
“Good morning, Lord Dare.” Lady Georgiana Halley curtsied, the skirt of her dark green morning dress flowing around her and a matching bonnet framing her sun golden hair.
Tristan snapped his jaw shut. Ordinarily, a woman so lovely standing on his doorstep would be a good thing. There was nothing the least bit ordinary, however, about Georgiana Halley. “What the devil are you doing here?” he asked, noting that her maid waited a few steps behind her. “You’re not armed, are you?”
“Only with my wits,” she returned.
He’d been wounded by her wits on more than one occasion. “And I repeat, why are you here?”
“Because I wish to call on your aunts. Please stand aside.” Gathering her skirt, she brushed past him into the foyer.
Her skin smelled of lavender. “Won’t you come in?” he asked belatedly.
“You’re a very poor butler, you know,” she said over her shoulder. “Show me to your aunts, if you please.”
Folding his arms across his chest, Tristan leaned against the doorframe. “Since I’m a poor butler, I suggest you go find them yourself.”
In truth, he blazed with curiosity to discover why she had chosen to call at Carroway House. She’d known its location for years, yet today was the first time she’d deigned to darken his doorstep.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re unbearably rude?” she returned, facing him again.
“Why, yes. You have on several occasions, as I recall. If you care to apologize for that, however, I’ll be happy to escort you wherever you wish to go.”
A flush crept up her cheeks, coloring her delicate, ivory skin. “I will never apologize to you,” she snapped. “And you may go straight to Hades.”
He hadn’t expected her to apologize, yet he couldn’t help suggesting it every so often. “Very well. Upstairs, first door on the left. I’ll be in Hades, if you should require my services.” Turning on his heel, Tristan exited the hallway for the breakfast room and his newspaper.
As her footfalls receded up the stairs, he could hear her cursing him under her breath. He allowed himself a small smile as he sat back, the paper unopened before him. Georgiana Halley had come across Mayfair to call on his aunts, though she’d seen them at her own home less than a fortnight earlier, just before Aunt Milly’s latest attack of gout.
“What the devil is she up to?” he murmured.
Given their past, he didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her. Tristan stood again, leaving the remains of his breakfast on the table in case one of his servants should decide to make an appearance and clear it away. Damnation, where was everyone this morning?
“Aunt Milly?” he called, topping the stairs and angling to the left. When he’d invited his aunts to live with him three years before, he’d given up the domain of the morning room, and they and every imaginable foot of bombazine and lace had taken full advantage of that fact. “Aunt Edwina?” He pushed into the bright, frilly room. “Why, I hadn’t realized you had a visitor this morning. And who might this charming young lady be?”
“Oh, shut up.” Georgiana sniffed, and turned her back on him.
Millicent Carroway, garbed in a frighteningly bright-colored version of an Oriental kimono that clashed with every other hue in the room, poked her walking cane in his direction. “You know very well who’s come to visit us. Why didn’t you tell me she’d sent her regards last night, you evil boy?”
Tristan dodged the cane and swept in to kiss his aunt on her round, pale cheek. “Because you were asleep when I returned, and you informed Dawkins that I shouldn’t disturb you this morning, my bright butterfly.”
Bubbling laughter issued from her ample chest. “So I did. Fetch me a biscuit, Edwina dear.”
The angular shadow in the near corner rustled into motion. “Of course, sister. And you, Georgiana, have you taken breakfast yet?”
“I have, Miss Edwina,” Georgie replied, with such warmth in her honeyed voice that Tristan was startled. He and she and warmth didn’t often appear together. “And please, stay where you are. I’ll see to Miss Milly.”
“You are a treasure, Georgiana. I’ve often said so to your Aunt Frederica.”
“You’re too kind, Miss Edwina. If I were truly a treasure, I would have come to call on you before now, instead of making you travel across Mayfair to see Aunt Frederica and me.” Georgiana rose, treading hard on Tristan’s toe as she strolled to the tea tray for the plate of biscuits. “How do you take your tea, Miss Milly? Miss Edwina?”
