“I asked the cook to make an especially hardy offering in your honor, knowing your penchant to being gutfoundered.”
“I’m not a knight of the trencher. You happen to have caught me a few times when I was particularly hungry. It was a coincidence.”
He smiled, not believing her. Plainly, he thought her a piggy female who liked to yam more than she ought.
“I’m pleased to be able to provide you with plenty of nourishment. Besides, in return, you’re going to help me with Prinny and make him accept all the art and allow me to return to London, remember?”
Glynnis felt a little of her contentment seep away. She’d only just found a level of security, but when the Prince Regent accepted the art and Hargrove left, she would lose it again.
Unless...
She couldn’t.Could she?
Chapter Nineteen
In a few hours, withtwo footmen accompanying them, Glynnis and Hargrove arrived at the Pavilion in the viscount’s spacious traveling carriage with what they could haul in one trip.
The Regent was out when they arrived, but expected back momentarily.
“Just like him,” Hargrove muttered to the back of the retreating servant. Meanwhile, they set up the pieces in the main salon under the domed roof.
“Stop pacing,” Glynnis advised him, and he came to a stop by the window overlooking the west side with the stables in the distance.
“I see him now,” he said. “He’s coming from the stables. Not quickly, either. He’s ambling and talking to some other gentlemen.” Then he glanced back at her.
“You shouldn’t stand so close to that painting,” he griped, gesturing at the dark Spanish landscape.
“Whyever not?” she asked.
“Because frankly, you outshine it, and he’ll wantyouhere instead of it.”
She tried not to smirk, but Hargrove was still free with his compliments despite saying he ought to consider his words more carefully. If she didn’t know better, he would turn her head and she would be in love with him within the hour.
If she wasn’t already, and she sadly suspected she was.
In any case, she was about to do something that would make him distinctly angry, yet she couldn’t imagine how else she could keep him in Brighton and keep a roof over her head. For despite having lost a measure of enthusiasm for husband-hunting, she still needed a wealthy one as her only way to survive. Or return to Wales and live her life as a spinster daughter.
