“I won’t be long,” the man said, sounding profoundly smug not to mention entirely insensitive to the fact that Miss Talbot’s reputation was at stake.
“You’ve discovered us!” she proclaimed loudly, and James noticed Staunton’s head whirl around to gape at her rather swiftly.
“Discovered us?” he echoed. “It’s only Hargrove. He won’t say anything.” Staunton turned back to him. “Will you?”
James ignored him. “Will you come with me, Miss Talbot?”
She hesitated, glancing uncertainly between him and Staunton.
“Is Lord Staunton correct?” she demanded. “You won’t say anything, not even to defend my honor?”
Defend her honor? What on earth did she mean?She sounded as if she wanted him to make a hullaballoo over this blatant indiscretion.
“Surely you don’t wish anyone to know you allowed a married man to kiss you.”
“Married?” she exclaimed, and then her eyes narrowed at Staunton. “Where is your wife? Is she here?”
“Of course not. I always leave her in London.”
She pushed way from the wall and skirted her lascivious admirer, striding toward James, her expression furious.
“Are youallscoundrels?” she muttered, gliding past him.
She must be a lunatic!She seemed angry to have been taken in by a married man, yet her own fiancé was on his way to claim her.
Turning, he caught up with her. “You are a puzzle, Miss Talbot.”
Shaking her head, she wouldn’t look at him. “You all stick together, don’t you? Even if he had been tumbling me upon the carpet, you would have hushed it up, probably helped him to his feet and dusted him off, rather than call him out to do his duty.”
“His duty?” James considered her words. “Whatever can you mean? He’s married and his only duty is to his wife, poor sap of a woman.”
“But if he hadn’t been married, which I didn’t know, by the way—”
“Did you ask him?” he interrupted her.
“Not exactly, but he was very ready with the ‘I’ do this and ‘I’ do that, and not a single ‘we,’ just like Lord Cumberry.”
“Lord Cumberry isnotmarried.”
She turned an interested look upon him, and James felt his stomach plummet.Was she still husband hunting despite having a man on the hook?It was beyond the pale.
“Cumberry is practically impoverished,” he told her in case she hadn’t understood his earlier message. “Mostly from hanging around with the Prince Regent and trying to keep up with his royal excesses. I suggest you keep Cumberry at a distance unless you wish to be parted from your own inheritance.”
She looked away before he could read what was behind her deep brown eyes.
“I ask again,” she began, “if Lord Staunton hadn’t been married, then would you have decried his behavior and told him to do the honorable thing?”
James halted his steps and laid a hand on her arm to stop her, too.
“Tell me truthfully, are you trying to free yourself from an untenable situation? Were you forced into an engagement? Is your fiancé a brute?”
She hesitated, and in that moment, he doubted she was going to tell him the whole story.
“I was not forced,” she admitted, “and he is not a brute.”
And with that, she turned away.
He considered how she’d left the party and went off alone. Again.
