She reached for the basket. “I told you, I—”
“No arguments. It is now an entertaining expense that I must cover, as host of the party.”
“Hogwash,” she said. “You already know you’re going to reject all of my suggestions, therefore it has nothing to do with your party at all. You just want to win.”
He grinned at her. “I always win.”
Except he hadn’t. He had lethertake this round.
They both knew she could not force him to taste potential new dishes. He had agreed because... oh, who knew how his mind worked? Either he secretly enjoyed letting her take charge, or her queries had made him fear she’d think of something he hadn’t. He’d feel honor-bound to exhaustively test all possibilities.
Which made Unity honor-bound... to let him. She schooled her features into a mask of innocence to hide a spark of devilry. In Act One, Lambley was used to getting his way. He thought he’d ended the matter by condescending to taste a creation he’d already dismissed out of hand.
But Act Two was just beginning.
Chapter 10
“Shall we continue with black currants?” Unity did not wait for an answer, but continued on toward the first row of fruit stands.
She kept her eyes wide and her expression rapt as she listened to a long, boring lecture about which currants were fit for a ducal kitchen. She nodded sagely at each carefully researched conclusion.
When at last he finished his speech, he lifted his brows expectantly.
She reached out, plucked two plump berries at random, popped one into her mouth, and tossed the other at him.
He caught it out of reflex.
It was Unity’s turn to raise her brows expectantly.
A muscle worked at the duke’s temple. Politeness dictated he not be rude to a woman, nor offend the fawning vendor. With obvious ill temper, he placed the berry into his mouth and made a tight-lipped smile at the supplier as he chewed.
“You’re right,” Unity said at once, handing the vendor a penny for his troubles. “Not these. Let’s try the raspberries.”
She set off for the next stand.
Lambley caught up as soon as he’d retrieved Unity’s penny and purchased a pint of delightfully imperfect currants at no doubt an exorbitant price.
He was opening his mouth to scold her when he arrived.
“Is there an empirical method to determining the optimal raspberry?” she asked before he could get a word out.
His lips tightened only briefly. Of course there was a best method, which he had devised himself after much experimentation, and which he now enunciated in exhaustive detail.
“Mm-hm,” Unity said when he finished, and plucked two crimson berries at random from the cart. One for her, one tossed at him.
By the time they reached the blackberries, Lambley was on to her. He was also in possession of several quarts of imperfect fruit.
By the time they reached the elderberries, he’d ceased explaining his detailed berry-judging methodology, and switched to lecturing about a fictional law that included never allowing women in yellow dresses to opine on his kitchens, followed by lamenting the inferior berry-choosing capabilities of insolent young women whose name began with the letter U.
By the time they reached the strawberries, Unity was laughing too hard to listen to his increasingly dramatic speeches, and Lambley was trying too hardnotto laugh to say anything coherent or truly disdainful.
Unity popped a strawberry into his mouth before he could get going on another tangent.
The duke’s eyes widened at this impertinence, but since his mouth was too full to scold her properly, he retaliated by lifting a strawberry from the cart and placing it betweenherlips instead.
Her mouth exploded with flavor. He had, of course, selected a bright red berry ripe enough to be sweet and firm enough to have a hint of tartness to balance out the flavor.
“That’s a good strawberry,” she was forced to admit.
