“I would rather like to keep my cane intact, Miss Dawson!” the viscount snapped, his polished composure cracking as he tried to wrench it back. He was half bent, half hopping, his boots sliding on the damp grass while the dogs dug in like seasoned wrestlers.
Anastasia pulled at Pepita, her gloves slipping on the dog’s collar. “You little beasts, I said, drop it!” she hissed under her breath, mortification crawling up her neck.
The viscount gave a sharp yank. The dogs gave an even sharper one. And then, like some farcical tableau unfolding in slow motion, Pepita let go, Lupita leaped sideways, and Lord Chamberlain stumbled backward, his arms pinwheeling once—twice—before he plopped straight into the pond with a magnificent splash.
Benedict will have my head.
Anastasia gasped, clapping both hands over her mouth. Pepita and Lupita, delighted by their victory, barked a chorus of triumph and scampered back toward the house, tails wagging like banners.
“Lord Chamberlain! Are you all right?” Her voice cracked somewhere between horror and disbelief.
The viscount erupted from the water, sodden and sputtering, hair plastered to his brow, his coat a ruin of dripping wool. He looked less like a polished aristocrat now and more like a sea monster dragged from the deep. His eyes burned at her.
“Miss Dawson,” he said icily, water streaming from his jaw. “I had not expected my afternoon to end in such humiliation. Is this how you make sport of your callers? By setting hounds upon them and sending them headlong into ponds? How utterly undignified!”
His voice cut through the air, every word heavy with accusation. Anastasia opened her mouth to protest, to explain that her aunt’s dogs were not trained assassins, but the sharpness in his tone silenced her. The pleasant man from moments before was gone, stripped away to reveal someone quick to anger and quicker still to wound with his words.
Anastasia should not have been happy to hear the viscount speak to her in that manner, but she felt a cold satisfaction. It was the satisfaction of being right. She knew that somewhere under his honeyed tongue lay an entitled anger. Such men were not interested in her affections. They only wanted her compliance. The thought made her shudder.
In that moment, she knew she wanted nothing to do with him. Viscount or not.
But the realization gave her no relief—because she could already see Benedict’s expression in her mind’s eye. That slow, devastating arch of his brow. The measured silence before the cutting remark. The smug gleam in his eyes as he informed herhow very unsuitable she was.
Will he laugh? Or will he scold me until my ears burn? Heaven help me, I do not know which would be worse.
Chapter 13
The next letter was slightly damp. Benedict had not understood why until he reached the signature.
Chamberlain.
The viscount’s handwriting had blurred into indecipherable smudges, but the surviving words were enough:indignity… untrained hounds… never to return.He crushed the page once in his fist and set it aside, his jaw locked. The third complaint in a week—one gentleman scalded, another scared away, the third soaked.
Anastasia was making it impossibly hard to get rid of, and he hated it.
Benedict pressed his fingers to his temples, inhaling deeply and trying to be calm. She was a menace, a maddening menace with a sharp tongue and a gorgeous face. And yet, he could not forget her full lips and the way they felt against his, soft and perfect. And what was worse—what was intolerable—was that he noticed.
He should not notice.
He should not notice anything about her. He had no business noticing the set of her mouth, the quickness of her wit. His task was simple: secure a match for her, restore order. Anything else was indulgence—weakness.
If this continues, the callers will stop… and she will never marry. And then…
No, he could not let this continue, and the sooner he nipped it in the bud, the easier it would be for everyone else. He could not take another week of men fleeing the house in anger, then writing enraged letters accusing him of wasting their time. Men would steer clear of her forever.
Why does that make me feel… relieved? No, this will not do at all.
He reached for the bell and rang it short and hard. When the footman appeared, Benedict did not look up from the smeared signature on his desk.
“Send for Miss Dawson,” he said, each word clipped clean. “At once.”
He needed to put an end to this farce—before it dragged his name through yet more ridicule.
Minutes later, there was a knock on the door before Anastasia stepped in. She looked a vision in blue, her blonde hair pinned with ruthless precision, her mouth set in that thin, stubborn line that always heralded trouble. She looked like innocence lacquered over steel, and the sight of her only deepened his irritation.
“Mr. Straton,” she said sweetly. Far too sweetly.
“Sit.”
