“We should be so lucky.”
“My lord,” Alexandra chastised, but completely unrepentant, he only grinned at her.
“I’m just glad to escape.” Rose fanned at her face. “So many people, all looking at me!”
Lucien looked at her, wondering if he’d ever been so callow and naive. It didn’t seem likely. With his father’s reputation paving his way, either flaw could easily have proved ruinous. “You are theton’s newest oddity. They’ll look at you until they find new game to ogle.”
“Mama!”
Before he could explain himself, Alexandra cleared her throat. “In a sense, Lord Kilcairn is correct.”
“He is?”
“Well, yes. I would have worded it a bit differently, but—”
“Coward,” he interrupted.
“—but that is precisely what I meant by first impressions. In a month, some of those gentlemen and ladies will have only a vague recollection of whether they wish to be seen in your company or not.” She smiled in the dim light, and something odd thumped and skittered in Lucien’s chest.
“And?” he prompted.
“And after tonight, with perhaps an additional evening of the same quality, I should think none of them would mind engaging in a conversation with you, Miss Delacroix.”
“Oh, thank you, Lex.”
“Splendid.” Aunt Fiona chuckled. “But I didn’t see your friend, Lucien. Lord Belton, wasn’t it?”
He kept his gaze on Miss Gallant, trying to decide what, precisely, had just happened, and whether he was pleased or annoyed by it. “Robert has good sense. He didn’t attend, obviously.”
He spoke more sharply than he’d intended, but Fiona’s softheaded gloating irritated him no end. For God’s sake, the woman would have ruined the evening for all of them—and for the other Howard guests—in another two minutes. When Alexandra sent him another glare, he smirked at her. At least his comment had shut up his relations; he’d put up with more than enough prattling for one evening.
By the time he disembarked from the coach and strolled into the house, all three ladies had already vanished up the stairs. “Wimbole, cognac,” he ordered, heading into his study.
With a sigh he undid his cravat and sank into the armchair nearest the fireplace. The butler appeared at his elbow a moment later, and Lucien lifted the amber-filled glass off its silver tray. He took a swallow, letting the warm liquid burn down his throat to his gullet. “Find Mr. Mullins.”
“Yes, my lord.”
The solicitor must have been hovering nearby, because the door opened immediately after the butler left. Lucien continued watching the crackling fire through half-closed eyes.
“Mr. Mullins, scratch Georgina Croft off the list. I asked her to name her favorite author, and she said, ‘I rather like the original one.’ Thinking she meant the Bible, I then asked her which passage she preferred. Her answer was something along the lines of ‘the passage where he goes looking for Guinevere.’”
“She thought you asked her to name her favorite Arthur. I would have picked the same one.”
At the sound of Alexandra’s soft voice, it took every bit of willpower Lucien possessed to remain seated and look calmly back at her, standing in the doorway with her arms crossed over her chest. “All of which makes her either deaf or dim.”
“So you only carry on affairs with intelligent females?” she asked, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her.
“Are you asking out of general or personal interest?” he returned, watching her approach. This looked like a seduction, but considering she’d been annoyed with him five minutes earlier, he thought it more likely that she planned an ambush. She would find that he didn’t succumb easily.
“I’ve never heard of anyone making a list of potential spouses and then eliminating candidates when they don’t pass literary snuff.”
“Actually, it seems a rather sound method.”
“And yet, didn’t you tell me you preferred more mature females? Miss Croft looked barely eighteen.”
“I don’t believe in setting limits.” He sipped his cognac, grateful that his headache had departed—by supreme coincidence at the same time his relations had retired for the evening.
“But you have your solicitor keep your list of women for you.”
