Page 27 of The Subtle Craft of Courting Kate

Kate—who had flipped through her pages to jot notes as they had conversed—lifted her gaze to his. “However?” she echoed, a hint of that scowl leeching out into the question.

“Don’t you think she’s a bit”—Elliot paused as he searched for a patently ridiculous response—“too blond?”

“Too blond.” Kate repeated the words with a placid blink, as if she had not fully understood them. “Too blond! How, pray tell, can one be too blond?”

Elliot offered a bland shrug. “You’d have to ask Lady Eloise, though given her mother’s coloring, I’m fairly certain it’s entirely natural.”

In a tone that verged upon a growl, Kate said, “What is wrong with being blond!”

“Not a thing in the world,” he said, “except that I don’t prefer it.”

The sound Kate made in the deepest part of her throat reminded him rather of a feral dog guarding a meal. Her fingers pinched the pencil as she flipped pages once again and she gritted out the words between the clench of her teeth as she wrote out, “Must not be blond.”

“Oh, it’s not a requirement,” Elliot informed her cheerfully. “It’s just that I do have a preference for dark hair, so if it should come down to a deciding factor—”

Kate slammed the notebook closed. “You are ridiculous!” she exclaimed.

Elliot widened his eyes and lifted his brows in an expression of contrived innocence. One which, given the little snort Mrs. Littlefield swiftly muffled behind the press of her napkin, he assumed had been none too successful. “What?” he asked. “Is a man not entitled to the occasional preference? In my opinion, a liking for dark hair is somewhat more palatable than a taste for a substantial dowry.”

Mrs. Littlefield ventured, “To that end, did I hear correctly that Miss Applegate had a dowry of ten thousand pounds?”

“Likely,” Elliot said. “I’ll admit I wasn’t paying much attention.”

Kate’s jaw dropped. “You weren’t paying attention! To a woman who could be your future wife!”

“Well, she and her mother were speaking with you,” Elliot explained, “and I didn’t want to eavesdrop. I reasoned you’d make the pertinent notes where necessary and discuss them with me later.”

At last, Kate caught the sly wink he tossed at Mrs. Littlefield. With a groan, Kate let her head drop into her hands, thoroughly turning the little curl that had been left free to fall over her brow—and which she had been puffing out of her eyes all evening—to a frizzy mess. “Elliot,” she grumbled, though her shoulders shook with reluctant laughter. “You must take this seriously. This is your future wife we are discussing!”

“Ah,” Elliot mused as he rubbed his chin speculatively. “It seems we’ve stumbled upon another requirement.”

“We have?” Kate asked, straightening from the slouch that had bent her over the table.

“Yes. I think I’d like to have a serious sort of wife.”

She twitched a solitary brow up, wrenching it into an arch of patent disbelief. “You,” she said, almost accusingly. “You want a serious sort of wife?”

“Why should I not? Balance in all things, Katie, isn’t that where happiness lies? I’m often accused of all levity and no substance. Surely a wife with a propensity toward gravity would suit. Can you imagine the sort of havoc I might wreak if I had a wife with a temperament too much like my own?”

Was it his imagination, or had she gone just the tiniest bit pale?

“Besides,” he added, with a cheeky grin, “serious women are so much more fun to tease.”

A flush of pique burned away the faint pallor in Kate’s cheeks, and quick as the strike of a snake, she fished her napkin off of her lap and cast it straight across the table into his face. “Oh, you absolute—”

“Children,” Mrs. Littlefield chided, though she was not quite able to smooth away the traces of the smile that clung still to the corners of her lips. “At the dinner table? Really, now.” A cluck of her tongue and shake of her head. “Kate, you certainly know better than to let Lord Elliot goad you into such behavior.”

“She does,” Elliot said, as he clawed the napkin away from his face and dropped it to the table, “but she simply cannot help herself. It’s one of the things I love best about her.” And then, as that perplexed expression scored itself once more into the furrow that appeared between Kate’s dark brows, Elliot pitched his attention instead to Mrs. Norris, who had appeared in the doorway alongside the footmen to clear away the dishes. “Good evening, Mrs. Norris,” he said, with a polite nod of acknowledgment. “I do hope there’s dessert.”

Chapter Eleven

It’s one of the things I love best about her.

The words had been floating about Kate’s head for the last week, sliding through her thoughts at the most inconvenient of times. It wasn’t so odd, really, Elliot’s use of that particular word. They had been the closest of friends for most of their lives. Of course they were fond of one another. They always had been.

But soon—provided she fulfilled the task he had set before her—he would be fonder still of another. He wanted a wife he could love, one he would love. And that would necessarily change things, wouldn’t it? Some other lady would supplant her in his affections; not because he would become less fond of Kate, but because those two kinds of love simply could not be compared.

He would have less time for her, to be certain. Less time all around, once he had married. Once he and his wife had had those children he wished for. Surely the bulk of his time and attention would be reserved for his family. For his children. For the wife he would love.