Page 17 of Sir Andrew and the Authoress

She considered him a moment. “You are not going to leave me alone, are you?”

“You know me so well.”

“Unfortunately.” She glowered at him. “How are you and Emma even related? She is the dearest lady, while you are forever provoking me.”

“Emma and I have more in common than you would guess.” He looked at the box in her arms again. “We both take an inordinate amount of interest in your doings.”

“Well, I wish you would stop.”

“I find it far too entertaining to nettle you.”

“Why can you not find another person to bother?”

“No one else is sneaking about the castle at the moment.”

“You are insufferable.”

Andrew shrugged. “You have said so before, Josie. You need to think up new insults.”

“Why, when the most ready-to-hand are still accurate?” Her eyes narrowed. “And stop calling me Josie.”

“It suits you, though.”

“Calling you an imbecile suits, too, but I refrain from such impolite behavior as a general rule.” Her eyes blazed with the barb, triumphant at last.

He chuckled, not at all insulted. It had been too long since they’d exchanged words this way. Conversation with Josephine always invigorated him. She kept him sharp, as their wits struck one another the way a knife struck a whetstone. “When you fall to insulting my intelligence, we both know I have won the argument.”

“That is entirely false.” She scoffed at him, her cheeks full of color and her eyes bright in the candlelight. She enjoyed their verbal jousts as much as he did, even if she never admitted it. “I seriously question your mental acuity with regularity.”

“Do you?” He placed a hand over his heart. “But what does that say of your family’s efforts to educate me? The duke himself has taken me into his confidence, taught me side-by-side with his son and heir. Perhaps I should report to him that his own daughter finds my intellectual abilities lacking.”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “You wouldn’t dare bring my father into one of our tiffs.”

“I certainly would. Especially as I am certain he would be on my side.”

“Andrew—”

“Sir Andrew.”

A grimace was the last thing he saw on her face before she emitted an irritable huff, which immediately snuffed out the candle. She groaned. “Now look what you made me do.”

“My dear Josie, if you wanted to get me alone in the dark—”

Her exasperation came out in a hiss. “The very cheek of the idea.”

He had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. The only light in the corridor came from the far end, where the stairs to the main part of the house were found. A wall sconce always burned on that end, lighting the way for members of the household should they need to venture out of bed at night. Josephine had gone in the opposite direction.

That flame, far from them as it was, did nothing to illuminate the two of them. Andrew could only make out the barest lines of her form. She would see his outline better, standing as he was between her and the distant light.

He stood aside, leaving her path clear. “Come. Stop your flirting with me, and I’ll see you back to your door.”

“Flirting with you? Me?” She sounded genuinely shocked at the idea. Proving to him his wishful thinking was only that—a wish she saw more than Simon’s bothersome friend when she looked at him.

He needed to stop. Truly. It wasn’t fair to him or to her to entertain thoughts of more than whatever it was they already were. Friends? Foes? It didn’t matter. Nothing was going to change.

Nor did it matter that, as of late, he had noticed that Josephine blushed when he led their bickering down the path of flirtation, and he quite enjoyed the fluster he caused her. She nearly always gave up when he implied any sort of attraction between them.

“Yes. We both know you find me charming. Secretly.”