“I couldn’t help but wonder if you were here to turn yourself in privately for some nefarious deed, something to do with Miss Waltham. Or mayhap you’re here to ask Sir William to look after your affairs while you fled?”
What an impudent chit!On the other hand, she was just comely enough to get away with it. Besides her large, sparkling eyes, she had full breasts atop a pleasing figure from what he could tell where the apron was tied around her slender waist.
“The only thing I am running from is Miss Waltham’s irate father,” he told her. “He reputedly has a good aim.”
“What did you do to his daughter?” she asked.
Philip nearly growled.This wench could not hold her tongue!What’s more, she was asking him too many personal questions. He might have a word with the magistrate when he arrived regarding the quality of his help.
On second thought, he decided to plead his case and see how it sounded, for it was the bald truth.
“I vow what you read in the gossip column is a case of mistaken identity,” he said.
“You were never with the lady in question?” she asked.
The maid sounded like a solicitor. Philip coughed.
“I might have enjoyed a kiss with her, but nothing else.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Such as?”
All at once he wondered if she knew what else could be done or whether she was an utter innocent. Regardless, he wasn’t about to discuss such things.
“I did not get Miss Waltham in the suds. That was another man,” he vowed.
The maid nodded again, looking sage beyond her years.
“Do you know who it was, thisotherman?”
Philip shrugged slightly, noticing how she took in his movements before staring him in the eyes once more. She was an inquisitive, watchful, and strange chick-a-biddy, to be sure.
“I knowofhim. I have it on good authority who the scoundrel was from the servants’ grapevine. I’m sure you know how reliable and swift that is.”
She nodded in agreement. With all her questions, her luscious mouth was probably one ofthemost reliable and swift of all. As soon as he left, undoubtedly she would bolt below to the servants’ quarters to tell the magistrate’s other help what she’d learned.
In fact, it might be a good idea to tell her a little more. Mayhap, Philip would be believed once the gossip grapevine began whispering abouthisside of the tale.
“I believe Miss Waltham is protecting her lover,” he added.
“And her parents blame you,” she guessed. “But why?”
“From the kiss. Alas, we were seen by her mother from the drawing room window,” Philip confessed.
“How terribly exciting!” the maid exclaimed.
“No, it is not. It is terribly irritating, not to mention dangerous from my perspective. Miss Waltham won’t say it isnotme, thereby throwing me to the wolves. There were a number of single gentlemen at the house party, but only I was seen kissing her.”
“Worse and worse,” the young woman said, but she was smiling as if it were a game, which irked him tremendously until she asked, “Do you love her?”
Shocked, Philip shook his head vigorously. “Of course not!”
“Why do you say it like that, my lord? Why ‘of course not’ as if you couldn’t possibly love someone you were kissing?”
“It is not that.” He lifted his hat from his head, ran a hand through his hair, and then replaced the brim. “I suppose it seems obvious to me and, thus, should be to you. If I loved her, then I would allow myself to be trapped into marrying her. However, I have no feelings for her at all. I merely kissed her because she was alone on the terrace and looked as though she wanted to be kissed.”
Philip could see that interested his interrogator.
“That seems a rather weak reason. So you sloppily pressed your lips to a stranger’s?”
