“I worry more that you will be the problem,” he snapped back. “No one who knows me will believe that I fell in love with a woman as uncouth as you.”
“Uncouth?” Emery laughed. “I’m the daughter of an earl!”
“And yet you act more like the daughter of a butcher.”
She shook her head. “Well then, how do you plan to convince people that you are so wildly in love with me, if I really am such a coarse, uncivilized woman?”
Now it was Lucien’s turn to smirk. “For starters, you will be starting etiquette lessons. Hopefully that way, when we leave for London in a month, you will be sophisticated enough that thetonwill believe a man such as me could love a woman such as you.”
“You really know how to compliment a woman, Your Grace.” She rolled her eyes. “Fine, I will agree to your little scheme, and to your etiquette lessons. But only for the sake of your sisters! I am very fond of them, and I wouldn’t want any scandal attaching to them because of this disaster of a marriage.”
“Fine.” Lucien didn’t care about her reasons for playing along, as long as she did her part.
“But you, Your Grace, will have to learn how to compliment a lady better,” she said, giving him a wicked smile. “Starting now.”
“Now?” he repeated, staring at her blankly. “Why?”
“To apologize for yelling at me earlier.”
Lucien felt his face flush with embarrassment and annoyance, but she merely raised an eyebrow. “Go on then,” she said. “Give me a compliment. And remember: it’s all to save your sisters from ruin and convince thetonthat we are violently in love. If you can’t even say one thing you like about me, then we are doomed.”
Lucien hesitated. He looked over his wife, then sighed. “Very well. I suppose that you are… surprisingly selfless.”
“Surprisingly selfless.” She smirked again. “I suppose that’s not the worst compliment. But why do you think that?”
He frowned at her. “This wasn’t part of the agreement.”
“Just tell me.”
“Well, I suppose I thought that you were engaging in all this reckless behavior simply because you had a disregard for others.But now I see, after you offered to pay for the dresses, that you genuinely care for others. You didn’t take them dress-shopping simply to throw away money, but because you wanted them to have something nice.”
To his surprise, Emery smiled at him. “Yes, that is exactly why I did it,” she said. She paused, and he was sure she was going to say more, but then she shook her head slightly and stood. “Very well, if that is all, I will bid you goodnight.”
At the door, she turned and looked back at him. “And if I were you, I’d change out of those wet clothes as soon as possible. It’s not good to get caught out in the rain, you know. You might catch a cold.”
And with a last wicked grin, she was gone.
Chapter Eleven
“And this spoon is for the dessert course,” Lucien said, picking up the smallest spoon that had been set on the table in front of his wife and waving it in front of her face. “You eat it last. A good way to remember it is that it is the smallest spoon, which corresponds to the fact that dessert should be the smallest portion of the meal that a lady eats.”
Emery, he was unsurprised to see, glowered up at him. “The smallest portion of the meal should be dessert?” she repeated, incredulous. “Is that true for ladies, or also for gentlemen?”
“It is true for both,” Lucien said, “although it is especially true of ladies. A proper young lady should never appear glutinous if she is to attract a husband.”
“That is absurd,” Emery said, banging her fist down on the table in what Lucien would describe as an excellent example of how not to attract a husband. “You want to take away fun and love from a lady’s life, and now you also want to take away dessert?”
Lucien sighed and set the spoon back on the table. This was their etiquette lesson so far in the week since he’d returned from Cornwall, and he felt as if he was going to tear his hair out. It wasn’t that his wife was a slow learner. In fact, she was almost frighteningly quick and clever. The problem was that she was too clever and seemed to disagree with him--and by extension,Society--on what was the correct way to do things.
“Emery, can you please just listen to what I’m saying and not comment on it?” he asked now, pinching his nose once again to try and stave off the headache that she was bringing on. “I am only teaching you the rules, I’m not endorsing them one way or another.”
“But you do endorse these rules,” she said, crossing her arms. “Or why else would I have to learn them? If you didn't endorse these rules, then everyone would believe that you might actually have fallen in love with a woman like me who finds them silly and ridiculous.”
Lucien frowned. He couldn’t exactly argue with that, and while he wanted to have a witty retort, his head hurt too badly.She is driving me in circles!
“Why don’t we just move on to the correct way to exit the dining room?” he suggested after a moment.
“There’s a correct way to exit as well?” Emery moaned, putting her head in her hands. “We already spent a quarter of an hour discussing the correct way to enter it! There cannot be these many rules. It would drive any sane person to the madhouse!”
