Her grinding teeth sounded like gravel underfoot. “I have a second boot, sir, and you, a very large head.”
“Then you’ll have two cold feet.” He walked over and dropped the boot in her lap, grinning down at her. “But that will do.”
She huffed—what might have been a laugh—and replaced the offending boot on her foot. “You’re an idiot.”
“So you’ve said.”
She huffed again, seeming to be mercifully at a loss for insults.
He found he liked her off-balance. He found he likedherdespite every instinct screaming at him to run far and wide. From moment to moment, he couldn’t decide if he wanted to throttle her or kiss her.
A whirlwind of conflicting emotions, an unpredictable woman in every sense, but the contrast wasn’t altogether unpleasant. Aside from the lump at the back of his head, Renard would go so far as to call this evening overall thrilling. And it had nothing to do with the three cretins he’d pummeled in the square.
“You’re staring again,” she said.
He laughed. “Add it to my growing list of flaws, right next to handsome and being in possession of a dukedom.”
Mention of his title soured her expression. “Just when I was starting to tolerate you.”
A man’s heart shouldn’t leap at such a cold term as ‘tolerate.’
“Should I regale you with my many flaws? I’m told they are vastly amusing.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, the action not seeming to bother her shoulder. “This should be good.”
“I drink profusely, am honest to a fault, and have lain with women without marriage.”
The last on his list left a wonderful blush on her cheeks, but she didn’t look away.
“Honesty is a flaw?” she asked.
“People are rarely interested in the truth.”
“If it’s your opinion, then it isn’t truth.”
God, but he couldn’t relax a second if he hoped to land any hits in their verbal match. “Shall we saymytruth, then?”
She was smiling now.
Renard’s chest swelled. “And my penmanship is abhorrent.”
“Really?”
“Doctor’s scratch is legible in comparison.”
She laughed.
He was flying.
“What else?” she asked.
That lingering look she had in the alley came to mind, and Renard’s joy dimmed. “Am I not keeping you from your husband?”
He’d never heard a woman cackle, which Miss Forthright did now, loudly.
Renard wouldn’t decipher his relief. “Not a fan of the institution?”
“Not a fan of themanpart.”
