But he wasn’t in a good mood.
Something was wrong.
Maybe the nagging disquiet he felt derived from the fact that his win at the chessboard on Monday hadn’t been due to his own skill. Instead, it was almost certainly owing to Lady Phoebe’s rather slapdash play that evening. She had been more scattered than usual, putting her fingers to her mouth several times before remembering and jerking them down.
In retrospect, it was understandable she had been preoccupied. Her surprising engagement to the Duke of Thornwick had been announced the next day. She had likely been anxious on Monday evening about the impending announcement of her nuptials.
Come to think of it, his own disagreeable mood had started the same day her betrothal was made public. Tuesday.
Peculiar.
The very beginning of a trace of an inkling of a notion started to tease at a distant corner of his mind.
Rap-rap-rap.
The inkling fled as he turned on his heel to stare at the door which led to the special entrance. He wasn’t expecting a knock at that door. He had never had a knock at that door. The women who came through that door didn’t knock.
A familiar voice said, “It’s me, George.”
He opened the door, and now he was even more out of sorts.
Lady Phoebe Finch was unannounced, tripping lightly into his study on a Friday afternoon. Not the right day. Not the right time.
And she had come through the special entrance that had its own staircase. The special entrance from the back garden off the alley that obviated the need for a servant to let her in. The special private entrance that only his mistresses used.
Phoebe had previously always come in through the front door of the Danforth town house, laughing with his butler Wynn, accidentally dropping her wrap or her reticule or her gloves on the floor of the hall, popping down to the kitchen to chat with Mrs. Hay and to snatch a few biscuits before coming to his study where she would leave crumbs on the carpet which he would have a chambermaid come and sweep up after she left.
Wrong day. Wrong time. Wrong entrance. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
“I want a rematch, George. Let’s play.” She put down her reticule and took off her gloves.
“We play chess on Mondays, Phee.” He picked up her dropped glove and handed it to her.
“I know. But I thought, just once, you might indulge in a change of routine.” She untied the ribbons of her bonnet.
Once more, he picked up a glove and handed it to her. “Why? Are you busy on Monday?”
She took off her bonnet. “No, I will also come on Monday to play.”
“You want to play an extra game?”
“Yes.” She unbuttoned her silk spencer and shrugged her way out of it. “But I’d like to change the rules.”
He ignored the dropped glove this third time. He was provoked by what she had just said.
“Change the rules?” Yet another unprecedented thing. “Use some of those bizarre Italian castling rules?”
“No, I misspoke. I didn’t mean the rules of the game. I meant I’d like to lay a wager.”
“Blast, Phee, use your words precisely. A wager is entirely different from an alteration in the play of the game.”
“Calm yourself, George.”
He resumed his pacing. “I am calm. I’m just not myself this week. And I don’t know why. Maybe because it’s been so hot. It’s a puzzle.”
“Has anything happened?”
“No.”
