It was dark within. Joan knew her brother had proper servants, but they must have learned by now not to admit visitors, light, or fresh air before three in the afternoon. She peeled off her gloves and raised one eyebrow at the man still holding the door open, now staring at her in amazement. “How do you do, Lord Burke?”
Slowly he closed the door. “Very well, Miss ...”
She closed her eyes for a moment. Was shethatforgettable? Or was he that dense? “Joan Bennet. I’m Douglas’s sister. We’ve met a dozen times at least.” Well, perhaps more like half a dozen, and none at all in the last couple of years, but he didn’t look in any state to contradict her.
“Have we?” He folded his arms, and managed to look rather austere and forbidding, despite his state of undress, unshaven face, and the wild tangle of his hair. He still wore it long, she noticed, right down to his shoulders ... which were far broader and more muscular than she had remembered.
“You always seem to be unclothed when we meet,” she blurted out, then smiled sweetly as his jaw dropped. “But perhaps you don’t remember that time you burst into my bedroom?”
His eyes narrowed, and color washed up his face, visible even in the gloomy hall. “Now I remember you,” he said in a low voice. “The impertinent girl.”
She beamed. “Yes, that’s the one. Shall I show myself up? I assume Douglas is still abed.” She turned toward the stairs and started up.
“Where are you going? Bloody—dash it all, you can’t burst into a man’s bedchamber at this hour!” He bounded after her.
Joan stopped and turned to face him. Three stairs down, he was shorter than she was, so she had the pleasure of looking down at him and his naked chest. “But that’s what you did to me. In the middle of the night, no less.”
Deeper color roared across his high cheekbones. “We werechildren.”
She pointedly looked down. “Obviously not anymore.” To her immense delight, he actually crossed his arms as if to cover himself. Joan bit her cheek to keep from bursting into snickers. “But my mother sent me to see Douglas, and the longer I argue with you about it, the less time I shall have for myself after doing my duty. Don’t worry,” she said as he opened his mouth to argue. “I know where his room is.” And she turned her back on him and hurried up the rest of the stairs, listening to his footsteps thunder up behind her a moment later.
Douglas was, as expected, sleeping off a drinking binge. Joan studied the lump under the blankets for a moment. Once she decided it could only be one person, she went to the windows and threw open the drapes. The blankets didn’t stir. She opened a window, letting in a gust of spring breeze and the rattle of carriages and carts in the street below. The blankets were still. Perhaps it was all blankets and even Douglas wasn’t there. That would be grossly irritating, since she would either have to find her brother or go home and tell her mother he hadn’t been in. There was one way to know for sure. She grabbed the end of the covers nearest her, and yanked.
Douglas raised his head and blinked at her, his eyes bloodshot and unfocused. “Bloody hell,” he said in a muffled voice. “Who the devil are you?”
“Your sister,” she said briskly, tossing the blanket back over most of him. A fleeting glimpse of her brother’s bare arse was more than enough. “Mother sent me.”
Douglas pulled the blanket over his head, and said something that sounded very vulgar. Joan filed it away for future reference—in private, of course. Her fascination with bad language would land her in so much trouble if her mother ever discovered it.
“She wants you to come to the Malcolm ball tomorrow evening.” She made a great clatter shoving things off the only chair in the room and dragging it to the side of the bed. “Shall I ring for tea?”
“Go away,” he said beneath the blanket.
“I’m very sorry, I can’t do that until you promise to attend the Malcolm ball. Do you promise?”
“No,” her brother moaned.
Joan reached for the bell cord and pulled it, hard. “I braved your half-naked friend downstairs. What is he doing here, by the way? He really should let the footman answer the door; it was quite alarming to come face-to-face with his bare chest. Also, heshoutedat me when he opened the door. Douglas, are you listening?”
“No,” he moaned again.
“Good,” she told him. “I have plenty more to complain about, and might as well do it to you.”
Douglas flipped the blanket away from his face. “What will it take?” he asked desperately, “to make you go away?”
“Your promise, in writing, to attend the Malcolm ball.”
“In writing?”
“So I can prove to Mother that I did, in fact, secure your promise, and that it isnotmy fault when you don’t show up anyway, despite having given said promise.”
Her brother stared at her for a moment, finally focusing his gaze. “I despise you, Joan,” he said at last. “I really do.”
She seized the blanket when he tried to pull it back over his head. “It’s not my idea that you go to the Malcolm ball. Even Papa doesn’t care. But Mother has it set in her mind that you would make a handsome couple with Felicity Drummond, and she’ll be at the ball tomorrow night.”
“Felicity Drummond?” Douglas’s face was comically blank. “Who?”
“I suppose you could ignore Mother’s summons and stay away, but then you run the risk of finding yourself betrothed to Felicity without having ever met her. She’s sweet enough,” Joan added conscientiously, leaving out any mention of Felicity’s snide sister and grasping mother.
