She supposed he was correct about that.
Byron looked to the doorway. “What is keeping Beaumont, I wonder?”
“What about you?” said Jane. “Isn’t anyone expecting you to be somewhere else? Can you just turn up here in Hampshire for days without any consequence?”
“Clearly,” said Byron.
“But that woman you brought here. She’s not expecting you?”
Byron shrugged eloquently. “I can’t say for sure about that. She’s probably beside herself, wondering why it is that I am not following her about, composing sonnets about the backs of her heels.”
“Don’t you like her?” said Jane.
Byron looked abashed. “Yes, apologies, that was unkind, I suppose. Odd thing with women, you know. At first, they meet me, and they are ever so closed off towards me, and I find this to be some sort of challenge that I must chip away at, and when I do…”
“When you do, what?”
“Well, I don’t know, once they aren’t so closed off, I suppose I’ve won. What is there to do with them at that point?”
Jane blinked at him.
“I just hope that you, Miss Jane, stay entirely this hostile towards me, forever and ever. It’s the only way I can maintain my affection, do you see that?”
Jane’s eyes widened. “Well, you hardly think of me in the same category as Lady Caroline, of course.”
Byron thought about that. “I suppose there are different categories you both might fit in, but I have to say that I don’t understand what you mean.”
“I mean only that she is the sort of woman you would pursue, whereas I am very old and very poor and very uninteresting to you in that way.”
Byron smirked. “I see.”
Jane felt a blush rising on her cheeks. “Not thatIam interested in you in that way. You’re a child.”
“Yes, I suppose, to your perspective, I am.”
“You can’t be more than six and twenty.”
“Four and twenty,” he said, giving her an insouciant grin, gazing at her in a way that men did not, as a general rule, gaze at her.
“Stop that,” she said.
“All right,” he said and kept grinning at her.
She turned her attention to the door. “Where is Beaumont?”
“I have to say that I’ve never wasted my time on a woman who didn’t seem to know her own charms,” said Byron. “I never thought I’d find it the least bit enticing, but perhaps—”
“I would never,” said Jane sharply.
He laughed, delighted.
She was very much blushing now. “And you would never either.”
At this moment, Beaumont appeared in the doorway. “Apologies for the delay,” he said. “I was detained by speaking with my wife. She is not the least bit pleased that I have guests at a time like this, but I asked her what I was supposed to do, turn you both out into the street?”
Yes, Byron had a tendency to do this, didn’t he? Just arrive places and then people had to accommodate him. It was maddening. Jane didn’t like being brought into it as another accommodation.
Beaumont came in and sat down at the table with them. “I hope the food hasn’t gone cold. You two should have started without me, really. I should have sent word for someone to come in here and let you know not to wait. I’m terribly sorry.”
