His fingers stopped.
Then there was Miss Honeywell.
He was really quite busy and there was no need at all for him to get up from his desk and be thus irresistibly drawn to the window, to see what she was up to.
She was in the garden, frolicking with his dogs.
He watched her throw a ball and blinked in surprise when, rather than a weak toss, she threw it clear across the meadow, his dogs panting after it.
The woman had a strong arm, grant her that. Quiteunusual for a duke’s sister’s English companion. Or maybe not?
This Miss Honeywell. She was a bit of a puzzle, was she not?
He frowned.
He couldn’t quite pinpoint it, but something was off with that woman. He felt it in his bones.
She embodied everything he despised in a woman. Artificiality, vanity, silliness, helplessness, a tendency to swoon and weep. Yesterday after supper, she’d declared that she had eaten so much she could not possibly take another step, and asked whether he would be so kind as to carry her upstairs. For the steps on the stairs were so very many and her room was so far away.
Schneider had snorted into his glass, and he nearly had as well. Instead, he’d barked back that she had a perfectly healthy pair of legs which she’d better make use of.
Then he’d caught her batting her eyelids at him with a smirk, which gave him the feeling that she was mocking him.
Then she’d fainted more times than he could count, for the slightest thing would set her off into a swoon, with the cursed Schneider by her side, ready with hartshorn salt.
“I recommend you tie the vial around your neck,” he’d advised her.
Which, to his infinite exasperation, had caused her to burst into tears.
Really, every single thing would set the woman off, it was ridiculous.
Then, out of the blue, she was romping about the meadow wilder than a boy. He watched her lift her skirts and, in a shockingly hoydenish manner, race the dogs to the farther side of the garden.
He rubbed his eyebrow, perplexed.
That evening,after supper, Schneider suggested they play cards in the drawing room.
“Since there are three of us, let’s play L’Hombre.” He held out the card deck to Evie. “Miss Honeywell, why don’t you deal?”
“You are acquainted with the game, are you not?” Georg gestured for her to sit on the small sofa while he pulled up a chair for himself.
She threw him a withering glance. “Naturally. It is an old-fashioned game for elderly ladies.” She picked up the pack of cards and split the deck, but instead of the quieter, more elegant shuffling that ladies were wont to do, she held each pack down with a thumb and forced the edges together in a rapid riffling of cards. It was a masculine, aggressive way to mix cards that was executed usually only by practised gamblers in men’s clubs. It was rather improper for a gently bred lady to do this.
Georg’s eyebrows rose into his hairline.
Schneider’s jaw dropped.
Then she began shuttling them rapidly, tapping one pack on top of the other after every third shuffle, creating an interesting tonal pattern: snap-snap-snap-clap. Snap-snap-snap-clap.
“I will show you how a proper English gentlewoman plays cards.” She lifted the corner of her mouth into a small, lopsided smile.
Snap-snap-snap-clap.
Riffle.
Snap-snap-snap-clap.
Riffle.
