Page 11 of The Dangerous Lord

They were back to that again, were they? “If indeed I’ve mistaken the situation, I’ll happily write a correction. So far you’ve told me nothing to prove me wrong.”

“And you have failed to explain why you’re so interested in my personal affairs.” Strolling back to the desk where her papers were scattered willy-nilly over the scarred oak surface, the man actually had the effrontery to sort through her notes. “Tell me, what possible reason could you have for writing about me? Have I unwittingly offended you?”

She chose to ignore his obnoxious implication that revenge motivated her columns. “I write about everyone, Lord St. Clair. Your story is merely one among hundreds.”

“But a mundane one.” He picked up an envelope, scanned it, then set it down. “A man provides a house for a woman to whom he’s not married. Surely that’s boring fare for your readers. Men do it all the time.”

His indifference roused her moral indignation. “That’s precisely why it’s offensive! Men seek out virgins to marry and want their wives to be faithful to them, yet they feel perfectly free to cavort with as many women as they can lay their hands on!”

He paused in rifling her desk to cast her a calculating glance. “You forget that I’m not married.”

“No, but you’re about to be.”

She regretted her retort the moment he froze. It suddenly occurred to her that he’d been fishing for just such a revealing statement, and she’d foolishly taken the bait.

He ambled toward her with deceptively easy steps, like the unhooded falcon taking flight. “What do you mean?”

“N-Nothing. Only that you’re a bachelor and ... you’ll marry some day and⁠—”

Without warning, the falcon loomed over her. “You know of my offer to Miss Hastings, don’t you?”

She swallowed, then nodded.

“I suppose you discovered that the same way you discover everything else—by delving into people’s private business.”

“No!” His insistence on seeing her as a sneak grated on her. “Lady Hastings told me. Katherine is a friend of mine.” A very dear friend, sweet and loyal, though timid as a mouse. That was the trouble. Katherine didn’t have the first idea how to deal with the likes of Lord St. Clair.

“I see.” His jaw tightened. “So you decided to expose my ‘misbehavior’ in the paper to make your ‘friend’ doubt me and refuse my suit.”

He was very nearly right, though Felicity had really hoped to prod Katherine’s parents into doubting him. Poor Katherine had refused to break off with the viscount if it meant making her parents—especially her mother—angry. She’d even confided wistfully to Felicity that if Lady Hastings could only be made to realize how unsuitable Lord St. Clair was, there might be some hope of refusing his suit.

Felicity had advised the young woman to oppose her mother, but Katherine didn’t have it in her. Even so, Felicity mightn’t have interfered if she hadn’t learned that the man had both a mysterious, worrisome past and a mistress. The thought of her dear friend married to such a man chilled her blood. Felicity had met too many of Papa’s “fashionable” companions not to know what miserable husbands they made.

Renewed in the rightness of her position, she met his gaze boldly. “I thought Katherine—and her parents—should know what she’s getting herself into.”

Eyes cool as black marble stared her down. “And you couldn’t tell them in private because then you’d have to reveal your nasty hobby of meddling in others’ affairs.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. She’d had about enough of this overbearing viscount and his insults. “See here, Lord St. Clair, I’m not the one who’s keeping a mistress while he woos a nice young gentlewo⁠—”

“For the last time, Miss Greenaway is not my mistress.”

“And I suppose that the baby she had with her, the son who was easily less than a year old, isn’t yours either.”

That stopped him cold. His expression grew shuttered, then thoughtful. “Well, well. So you know about the baby, too. And I can see what you deduced from that.”

“Do you deny it?”

“Would it do me any good? You have your mind made up that I’m a debaucher of innocent young women and a willing sire of bastards. I wouldn’t want to destroy your skewed assessment of me by providing you with something so useless as the facts.”

She bristled at this insult to her integrity. “If you can prove my deductions faulty, by all means do so.”

“All right.” Abruptly he began pacing the study from corner to corner, examining its contents as if taking inventory. He opened the silver snuff box that sat on the edge of a delicate table. “Do you take snuff, Miss Taylor?” he asked, as if it were the most natural question in the world.

“Of course not! That was Papa’s.”

“So this study belonged to him.”

“Yes.”