If her gowns started gaping and appeared ill-fitting, she would be in dire straits indeed. Eventually, thin and desperate, she would have to remain in her viewless room, eventually to slip the burden of this earth alone at the Old Ship. She exhaled with a despondent moan.
“Miss Talbot,” he broke into her thoughts.
“Again, my apologies. Tell me about this penance to the Prince Regent. Mayhap I can help.”
Naturally, he gave her a disbelieving look. Quite right, too.What could she offer?And yet, she rather preferred to be useful than not.
“Have you ever met His Royal Highness?” Lord Hargrove asked.
“As a matter of fact, yes. Once at a ball, not this Season but the last, he singled me out for a compliment on my gown. I was wearing Pomona green and white. It was a lovely evening.” She remembered for a moment being the object of the other ladies’ envy and gaining a little interest from some of the gentlemen when the prince seemed to favor her.
“Did you try to get Prinny to compromise you, too?” Hargrove had to go and ruin the memory. “It would have got you nowhere, you know, except the wrath of his mistress. One of them, at least.”
Glynnis made a face, but then the sandwiches were placed in the center of the little table along with a plate for each of them. Being insulted, even ridiculed, was a small price to pay for a tasty morsel. She glanced at the food, then at him.
With graciousness, he gestured for her to help herself.
Using a silver spatula, she took two of the small triangles of thinly sliced bread, arranging them neatly on her plate. Then she picked one up and, as a ploughman at his noon meal, she dug in. She’d eaten the sliced beef and mustard sandwich and was starting on the second one of cold tongue and watercress when she realized the viscount was watching her. He’d taken only a single mouthful.
Swallowing, she cleared her throat, sipped her tea, and smiled weakly.
“I skipped a meal,” she explained.
“It seems you skipped a few by your wolfish appetite.”
How rude of him to remark upon it!
“And you have a piece of watercress stuck between your teeth,” he added.
She gasped.Even ruder, although she appreciated his warning. If she happened to encounter the perfect gentleman after the nuncheon, she would hate to do so with a bit of greenery in her ivories.
Raising her napkin to her lips, she used the tip of her fingernail as discreetly and daintily as she could to remove the offending vegetable. Or tried to.
After a few seconds, she lowered the napkin, abandoned all sense of decency and decorum and asked, “Is it gone?”
Then she bared her teeth.
“Mostly,” he said before looking away. “Try sipping the tea and swilling it about in your mouth. That should dislodge the last of it.”
Instead of utter mortification, it struck her as humorous. While she did as Hargrove directed, swishing the milky brown brew in her cheeks, she nearly giggled which would have sprayed the white tablecloth. It might have been worth it to see his expression.
Eventually she swallowed, ran her tongue over her teeth and turned to him. She smiled again.
“Perfect,” he said, and his gaze lingered upon her mouth. Maybe he was remembering the intense kisses they’d shared.
After his first one at Wellington’s Apsley House, Lord Hargrove had approached her at Lady Sullivan’s home on Grosvenor Square. Again, she’d allowed his exciting advances. Such wondrous sparks had sizzled throughout her body, she vowed she would never forget.
“Thank you,” she said. And quick as a whip, she finished her second sandwich, fearing an efficient server might clear the plate away prematurely.
In companionable silence, she waited while he ate his first. Then he brushed the crumbs from his fingers onto the plate.
“In answer to your question, I’m here at the pleasure of Prince George for a couple of reasons, the main one being I failed to procure a particular work of art he desired, and therefore, I am in the dog’s house.”
“Brighton is the dog’s house?”
“It’s not London,” he pointed out.
“Agreed,” she said, “but I like the smell of the sea. It’s preferable to most of the smells of London, don’t you think?”
