Given his silence, Tilly felt she had leave to go on… “You see, there’s something I’ve always wondered. Why are aristocrats called nobility?”
A few seconds of silence ticked past before he came to and realized she’d asked a question—and expected an answer. “Never thought about it.”
That got a good laugh out of her. “You wouldn’t now, would you?”
His jaw tensed and released. “Fair play.”
“And here’s the thing,” she continued, “in my experience of noblemen, I’ve only ever seen a few being noble.”
His brow lifted, dry humor glinting in eyes that were more silver than blue. “Even a few?”
All right, he’d started playing along with her, but for some reason, it left a slick of sour in her mouth. This lord needed a few life lessons. “Do you know Lord Percival Bretagne?”
Of course, he would.
All nobs knew each other.
He shrugged. Now it was his shoulder brushing hers, and, lawks, there were more than a few muscles beneath that greatcoat of his. “Can anyone really know a man like Bretagne?” he asked. “If the rules aren’t of his making, he feels no obligation to play by them.”
Tilly took his meaning, but she also understood Isabel knew her husband, through and through, and had experienced naught but good from him. And that good in Lord Percival, Tilly had been the recipient of it, too. So, she had something to say to this lord and was feeling a mite righteous about it. “Lord Percival was the Savior of St. Giles, did you know that?”
His brow lifted a scant mite. “I didn’t.”
“There,” she said, sure as a barrister. “There was a nobleman being noble when he shut down all them dens of iniquity.”
The thing was, it wasn’t only Isabel who had saved Tilly nine years ago. Lord Percival had been there that night, too.
The lord crammed at her side snorted. “I don’t see myself becoming the Savior of St. Giles.”
“Well, I wouldn’t recommend losing any sleep over it,” she said, all het up. “Not many men, noble or otherwise, can be Lord Percival Bretagne.” She’d picked up on how the world saw Lord Percival—and she knew the world was dead wrong about him. He was loyal and true and noble. “And there’s Hope House, too,” she continued, unable not to now that she’d got going, “that he established to help all the doxies what wanted out of the life. Those women learn skills there that help them out in the world. Their sprigs, too.”
If a snort could be sardonic, this lord’s was. “A real paragon of virtue, that Lord Percival.”
“But he’s not a paragon.” Here was what Tilly had been working up to say. “That’s the point. He’s a man. One doesn’t need to be a paragon to be a good man or a noble man.”
The man beside her had gone silent, and Tilly saw with no small amount of satisfaction that, at last, her words had their intended effect and struck up a war behind his eyes. Finally, he said, “Three noble deeds?”
She nodded, attempting not to let her surprise show. She’d expected him to keep trying to bully her. But that look in his eyes communicated something different as he extended his hand. She took it and gave it a shake. “Three noble deeds,” she said, her courage of a sudden turning into bravado.
It was his hand.
The feel of it, specifically—big, strong, masculine. Even through his gloves and her gloves, warm. A hand full of capability and strength.
It wasn’t simply knowledge of those sensations—but awareness of them.
A shiver traced through her.
Nine years it had been since she was alone with a man who was touching her.
She’d made sure of it.
She even expected the little animal being who lived inside her to scream, Run!
But it didn’t.
Another surprise, that.
The cab began to slow, and Tilly startled back into the present and snatched her hand back. A quick glance out the window told her they’d reached her first destination, Old Bond Street. She cleared her throat and clutched her reticule, any excuse to avoid his eyes. True silver, that was their color. Not a clear silver, but opaque with dark gray ringing the irises.
