Remmy’s hand banded around her upper arm. “Oh dear. It seems Miss King has fainted.”
“I have n—mmmph.”
He pressed her to his side, shoving her head into his armpit and accepted someone’s smelling salts as he dragged her to his corner.
What was she supposed to do? Wriggle like a fish caught in a net? How undignified.
So she went entirely limp and made him work for this little farce. He grunted and sank several inches toward the floor under her limp weight.
“Help me move your body, King.”
No use answering. She’d fainted, after all.
“This would be easier,” he said, “if you stop playing dead.”
“I’m in the middle of a swoon, you boot brain. I cannot control my muscles.”
“Good God.”
He plopped her onto a sofa in his little corner of the room, and one of the buxom beauties pulled a fan out of her pocket andoffered it.
Tessa shook her head. “As you can see, I’m not truly fainted. Thank you, though.”
“I knew.” The woman put the fan back in her pocket. “Your acting’s not that good, miss.”
The other buxom woman snorted.
“You may go,” Remmy said. “I believe that’s Jonathan looking in at the window. He likely wants his wife back.”
The top half of a man’s head was bobbing above the windowsill. One of the beauties giggled and they both made haste for the exit.
Remmy loomed over Tessa, scowling. “Boot brain?”
“Noun. A man whose brain is like an old boot, both empty and odiferous.”
“Only men?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
He whistled, seemed a little dazed. “Tessa. Proper noun. She who is without mercy.”
“Oh, do stop with the compliments. And tell me what you’re up to. Who are the women hanging off you like a coat? Why is there a husband named Johnathan peeking in at the window?”
“Johnathan is Peg’s husband.” He kept his voice low so only she could hear. “And Peg, as well as her twin sister, Meg, are my employees at the Folly. I’ve hired them to play my… paramours.”
“And what role areyouplaying, Remington Ives?”
“One I’m quite suited to.” He pulled up taller, something in his face shifting, a mask falling away. “Hell. Here are my parents.”
A stately older couple had stepped through the doorway. The man had Remmy’s head full of thick hair, but it was steel gray. The woman had Remmy’s warm blue eyes, like sunlight spilling across the clear sky. Remmy had come by his dramatics the honest way—through birth.
“Welcome, everyone!” the Earl of Crossvale said. “I am honored you have all gathered to help me celebrate my sixtieth birthday. I hope to honor you with the best dinner the country can serve tonight. Shall we take ourselves to the dining room?”
The crowd began to line up in the proper order, and Remmy stood to rummage through a nearby cabinet. When he turned back around, he held a bottle of wine and a crystal decanter filled with amber liquid. “Good evening, Miss King.”
He was dismissing her, striding for the back door, bottles in hand.
As the room emptied, she followed him through a back door that led into the garden, rushing to catch up. “I want to know what you’re up to.”
