Her gown was grey again, although this one fitted better and was at least silk; a drab rainy-Tuesday hue with a fichu sewn in that completely veiled her décolletage.
Not that his imagination lacked.
Rogues sometimes had a preferred type. This one didn’t. Slender to plump. Dark to fair. Curvy to not curvy – he adored them all, and Miss Penrose fitted snugly in the middle.
Focus.
The mission was merely to woo, not seduce. To extract the information in that snippy noggin of hers and ignore the way those eyes caused an upheaval in his guts – although that could be the currants from the hevva cake as they sat like lumps of coal refusing to be digested.
And Miss Penrosewassnippy. Snippy and brave.
Certainly, he’d noted her difficulty speaking, her deliberate slow and rasping breath, so he’d prattled to put her at ease, her laugh causing his concern to lift. How had she regained her voice? Sheer perseverance?
“You admit to reading about me then?” he countered. “I am flattered.”
“They say you are a scoundrel.”
“Moi?”He held hand to barren heart. “You misquote, Miss Penrose. I believe the description was ‘affable scoundrel’.”
“And now you are here on business? With my Father?”
“Indeed, I hold Sir Jago in the highest regard.”
“Hmm. And which process of clay purification interests you most?”
The vixen.
“Well, where to begin, Miss Penrose, but let us not place business before–”
“Oh, I do apologise. Am I intruding?”
Jack thanked his lucky breeches for house guests stumbling in at opportune moments. No doubt he could have wittered his way out of the clay pit, but one should always kiss providence if it intervened…
Although maybe not on this occasion.
A winter’s day of a chap loitered in the doorway, short and dark with a pair of huge spectacles saddling his nose. Eyes gazed myopically, causing them to appear like huge brown beetles, and he wore a sadly creased baggy black jacket with a dung-coloured waistcoat.
He resembled death’s head on a mopstick.
Jack peered intently.
The man peered back.
“This is Mr Sewell, the professor’s assistant,” introduced Miss Penrose, and the two men shook hands, before embarking on the usual twaddle: weather, isn’t it hot; London, what a long way; roads, aren’t they bad; tonight’s ball, aren’t you early by one day?
“Well,” Jack proclaimed, “I must change before we leave as I cannot possibly put about my person with a brandy-stained waistcoat. I beg your leave, Miss Penrose. I trust we can continue our fascinating discussion anon.”
Those plush lips tightened, and it appeared the full unabridged rogue’s rules would be required in the taming of Miss Penrose.
As fortune would have it, a carriage to the ball awaited.
Chapter Six
“The proprietor begs that no dogs may be suffered in the ballroom.”
(Helston Assembly Rooms.)
A not insubstantial knee brushed Tamsyn’s once more within the close confines of the carriage, and it became clear that whatever his fribble status, Lord Winterbourne wore no padding.
