Page 10 of The Subtle Craft of Courting Kate

“I have not got wind!” Kate flashed, baring her sharp little teeth at him.

From the doorway, Mrs. Norris cleared her throat.

Kate startled, nearly upsetting her tea, her cheeks instantly flushing a vibrant crimson. “Oh, Lord,” she muttered, her shoulders slumping as she sunk deeper into her seat in humiliation. “Mrs. Norris, I—”

“Not to worry, dear,” Mrs. Norris said as she set a plate of pastries in the center of the table. “I blame Lord Elliot entirely, as I find whatever has gone amiss is usually his doing.”

“That’s hardly fair. I didn’t even say anything,” Elliot said as he reached for a pastry, only for Mrs. Norris to slap his hand away. “Rude!” he accused. “You wouldn’t have slapped Devon’s hand.”

“The duke pays my wages,” Mrs. Norris sniffed, tilting her nose in the air. “You simply eat at my table whenever it pleases you. Guests first.”

“I’m a guest!” Elliot protested.

“You’re family,” Mrs. Norris said, settling her hands upon her hips. “Miss Littlefield and her mother are guests of the duke. You’re welcome to whatever you please once they have served themselves.”

Elliot watched in mute shock as a devious little smirk curled the corner of Kate’s lips. She stretched her hand across the table and selected the finest pastry upon the plate, the one that was drizzled with honey and dotted with perhaps a dozen more walnuts than the rest. Her hand hovered over it for a second, two—the very pastry that he had been reaching for until Mrs. Norris had smacked his hand away—and then she snatched it up, dangling it in the air like a prize she had won.

“I wanted that one!” Elliot objected, jaw slack.

“I’m a guest,” Kate snipped as she bit into the pastry, savoring it to a degree that might have constituted comical, had Elliot the wherewithal to feel amusement over his chosen pastry being stolen before his very eyes. Kate’s shrewd eyes scoured the plate, ferreting out the second-best-looking pastry, which she nipped onto a plate and set protectively near her elbow. “For Mama,” she said by way of explanation. “When she comes down.”

Mrs. Norris made a sound rather like a muffled laugh, which she nearly—but not quite—smothered beneath the staid demeanor she most often employed. At long last, she gave a brisk nod, which Elliot assumed meant he was now free to take whichever of the pastries left he preferred.

“I don’t suppose,” he ventured to her as he cautiously reached for one, “I could trouble you for a handful of walnuts? My pastry is nearly bare.” He favored Mrs. Norris with his most charming smile.

“If my pastries are not to your liking,” Mrs. Norris suggested sweetly, “I’m certain you’ve got more than a passing acquaintanceship with a good number of street vendors. You may purchase as many sugared walnuts as you please from them.”

Elliot pulled a face. “But—”

“Be grateful I thought to make enough for you at all,” Mrs. Norris said, with a haughty lift of her chin. “Since you know full well the household is running on a skeleton staff, given that the duke is not in London, and you gave no indication you’d be attending breakfast, besides.”

This caught Kate’s attention, her dark eyes lifting from the pastry she’d been enjoying. “He didn’t?”

“No, he did not,” Mrs. Norris said. “To my best understanding, Lord Elliot—like many young men during the Season—rarely rises before noon. So it was somewhat of a surprise to find him at my table shortly after dawn.”

Elliot shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “You could hardly expect me to inflict Kate upon London without supervision.”

Kate’s shoulders stiffened as her mouth popped open in offense. “Inflict!” she parroted, her fingers scrunching the soft pastry in her hand. “Inflict me!”

“Perhaps my choice of words was poor,” Elliot allowed.

“Supervision!”

“Now, Kate, you know you could get lost on the hill that runs up to Longthorpe Manor if you hadn’t walked it a hundred times,” Elliot said. “London’s riddled with winding streets and sharp turns. You’d get lost the moment you stepped out the door. It was for your sake I rose with the dawn. Really, it was exceedingly chivalrous of me. A noble sacrifice of valuable sleep.” He pitched his voice to a surly grumble. “Which ought to have earned me the best pastry, if you must know.”

Kate shoved the remainder of the pastry in her mouth, thrusting her chin out in stubborn disagreement. “And was it a noble sacrifice to make me into your social secretary?” she asked, when she had managed to swallow down the last of the pastry.

“I beg your pardon?”

She gave a flippant gesture of her hand, fingers shiny with lingering traces of honey upon them, toward the stack of letters she’d dropped at his side. “Those,” she said, “all require answers.”

“Ah. Well, I thought you’d prefer to choose—”

“How am I to know which to choose! I haven’t the faintest idea of who any of those people are!” She threw up her hands in exasperation. “And I haven’t the faintest idea of what one is meant to wear to a garden party, or a musicale, or—or any of these events, besides.”

“Well,” Elliot said, as he bit into the substandard pastry he’d been allowed, “one typically wears a ball gown to a ball.” He chewed slowly, with consideration. “Provided one is a woman, I mean to say,” he added. Had he imagined it, or had the tiny muscles beneath her left eye twitched?

Kate muttered something beneath her breath as she speared a bit of egg with the tines of her fork, her shoulders set mulishly.