Yes.
It was a much better name for what they were to each other than patron and authoress.
After all, she had barely written more than a paragraph of the book she planned to nameThe New Adventures of Tommy Treadwell. Tomorrow, she’d set to work in earnest.
After dinner, she stayed longer than she meant to in the little library. She ate a crumbly cake, and Henry drank port.
He pushed back, stretched out his legs.
“You never married.”
“Since I am Miss Beasley, you know that. And some might think it rude of you to mention it,” Susannah said tartly.
“Do you think it rude?”
She answered sincerely. “Yes.”
He pulled his legs in and straightened his back. “Then I beg your pardon.”
She used her fork as a scepter. “Pardoned.”
But he did not back away from the subject as she expected.
“It’s only that you are a, uh, very interesting woman, and I find it difficult to believe you never had offers.”
She turned her head and looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Who said I never had offers?” She fluttered her lashes.
“You,” he said. “You.” He shook his head and smiled. Two smiles in one day.
“Me, what?” She fluttered her lashes again but then could not hold her coy pose a moment longer and burst out into laughter.
“You are a saucy minx,” he said, but it was not said as a scold.
“Yes. And you are?—”
He leaned forward.
You’re a good man and an earl, a rich man, a peer of the realm, a soldier, a widower, a father, a grandfather.
“You are a startlingly handsome gentleman.”
He sat back. She couldn’t tell if she had disappointed him.
She raised her fork once more. “That is the exact thing I thought when I first saw you. That is one startlingly handsome gentleman.”
“And when I first saw you, I thought you were?—”
“A madwoman.” She crossed her eyes and poked out her tongue.
“No,” he said, and she uncrossed her eyes and withdrew her tongue.
“No,” he repeated. But he said no more.
“Well, go on, then.”
“I thought you might be a witch.”
“What?” She began laughing again. “I like that. I say you’re a startlingly handsome gentleman, and you call me a witch.”
