“Churlish,” Mrs. Durand said gently.
Mrs. Hardy nodded, her eyes soft with tender, yet unyielding, regret.
The duke was stunned.
“Churlish,” he mused, as though his tongue could scarcely shape the word.
“The rules of our establishment require our guests to be, at the minimum, civil to each other, if they cannot be kind. We value Miss Wylde’s custom every bit as much as we value yours. And while your objective may not have directly been to hurt Miss Wylde’s feelings, we do believe yourobjective was towin, whatever the cost. Which you did. The consequence was that you hurt her feelings. And embarrassed her.” This was Mrs. Durand.
“We aregenuinelyfond of our guests, including you, and so grateful for their custom that it pains us greatly when any of them do not take to each other. As our entire aim is to create a congenial, if not familial, environment for our guests,” Mrs. Hardy added.
He was speechless.
“But she...”
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bring himself to say to these two women,But she led the room in a cheerful sing-along about my alleged impotence.
And they likely knew it.
They had him, and it was almost funny.
He pressed his lips together. He slowly leaned back and studied them.
“I can offer you no argument. Everything you’ve said is correct. It was unworthy of me.”
They were sympathetically quiet.
Mrs. Durand raised her eyebrows, as if she knew he could do even better.
He sighed. “One gets in the habit of ruthlessness, you see, when winning is a matter of life or death.”
“We’re familiar with that quality in men.” Little smiles here.
“I saw how to achieve my ends and so... I fear I did what I needed to do, reflexively.”
Their silence remained politely interested and gently, immovably damning.
“We can see how that would be a useful, even heroic, quality in . . . warfare,” Mrs. Hardy allowed. The telling pause intimated,But not in the parlor.
“It was not only an unworthy reflex,” he expounded. “Perhaps worse than that, it was ungentlemanly.” Hell’s teeth. It really was.
“And we strongly feel it isunlikeyou, as you are all that is graceful and genteel. Then again, one might be more irritable if, for instance, the writing of one’s memoirs wasn’t going well.”
He leveled a cool stare at her and admitted to nothing.
“Please accept my apology. And I shall of course apologize to Miss Wylde,” he said after a moment. “And to the other guests.”
“That would be most gracious of you. And we would be very grateful,” Mrs. Hardy said.
“She might not possess the kind of education or upbringing you’ve had the privilege to experience, but she’s clever and a delightful person, all in all, and we do believe she has been hard done by in the newspapers,” added Mrs. Durand.
He let this last bit lie. It wasclearlynot the time to debate that particular point.
There was a little silence.
“So what happens now? Am I to be ejected from my comfortable suite, then, like Lucifer from this heavenly realm?”
“Well, that depends.”
