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“The lady being the woman I intend to marry?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

HOW TO COMPROMISE A LADY

The words dropped between them like a stone tossed into a pool of water. Lord Devin blinked, and there was an audible gasp from the woman at Joshua’s side.

“What?” his chosen bride cried, jerking away. “Don’t be absurd.” Her cheeks turned pink, and her dimples disappeared.

“That was more than flirting,” Joshua said, the ruthless instinct of a hunter prickling the back of his neck. “You are mine.”

“More than a ballroom flirtation, I’ll grant you that,” Lord Devon remarked.

Her eyes widened with shock. She rounded on Joshua. “But no one knows who I am!”

“You kissed him,” her cousin put in. When most ladies would be censorious, she sounded envious. “We all saw it. Actually, I think you do have to marry him. You know your father would agree.”

“This proposal—if one could call it that—is no more than quixotic madness. The kiss … the kiss meant nothing.”

“It meant something to me,” Joshua stated. “I compromised you.”

“You can’t compromise me if you don’t know who I am!” she retorted. “Compromise implies that my reputation is impaired. If no one knows who I am, I cannot be considered tarnished.”

“That’s true!” her cousin confirmed, changing sides.

Joshua gave the cousin a swift glance, just long enough so that he would recognize her snub nose and the wash of white blonde hair that had fallen from her topknot when he saw her again. The lace on her bodice had to have cost fifteen guineas, not to mention the foaming layers of white muslin that made up her gown. Both ladies had the natural command that comes from being daughters of the nobility.

“Lord Devin, don’t you agree that the lady was compromised by that public kiss?” he asked.

“No, I do not.”

Joshua leveled a surprised glare at his lordship. Devin and he didn’t know each other terribly well, but they were both gentlemen. Why wouldn’t the man acknowledge that by kissing a lady, Joshua had put himself in a position wherein he was obliged to declare himself?

Every arbiter of polite society would insist that a proposal of marriage must follow a kiss.

Lord Devin responded with his own question: “Major, you recognized no one at this damnable excuse for a masquerade, did you?”

Joshua narrowed his eyes. Devin looked as if he was about to whip out a swordstick and cut out Joshua’s liver. He had thought the man mild-mannered, but at the moment he looked fierce enough to lead a brigade.

“I did not recognize anyone but you,” Joshua answered, truthfully enough. “If anyone asks me, which they will not, I will say that I was surprised and disappointed to find that Rothingale has fallen to such a low that he hosted this event full of disrespectable strangers.”

“Including your friend Clod,” his lady reminded him.

“He is a stranger to me from this night,” Joshua stated. The truth was that the next time he encountered Clod, he intended to knock him down.

“Clod?” Lord Devin repeated, frowning.

“Trywhitt,” Joshua supplied. “An old friend who now calls himself ‘Clod.’ ”

“A hell-raker at best,” Lord Devin snapped.

“Mr. Trywhitt was saucy with me, but I tipped him to the ground,” his lady said demurely.

Her cousin clapped. “It worked just as the stableboy promised, Li—” She broke off.

So, her name began with ‘L.’ “Liza?” Joshua asked.

His lady flicked him a glance. “Certainly not.”