Page 37 of The Lady Knows Best

She feared the countess’s warning had come too late.

CHAPTER 12

Miles wasn’t surprised to be denied admittance to Alistair’s sanctuary. In truth, he could only be surprised it hadn’t happened before.

The housemaid delivered the refusal with serious eyes and a sorrowful shake of her head. “No, my lord. He said he wasn’t to be disturbed for nobody.” And then, in a rushed whisper, she added, “His lordship’s still abed.” She clapped a hand over her mouth as soon as the words were out, as if she could call back her indiscretion.

Miles made no effort to hide his surprise. Alistair had never been one to laze about. “Is he unwell?”

The maid’s fingertips slid low enough to permit a few more sentences to slip out. “It were the roses, sir. And maybe Lady Frederica, a bit.”

It was Miles’s turn to rub a hand over his mouth and down his chin, to disguise an incipient laugh. “Oh, I see. Well, then, perhaps I’ll just—” He sidled past her, into the entry hall, and was halfway to the stairs before she seemed to have realized her lapse. “I’ll just make sure he’s all right.”

The Earl of Ryland’s bedchamber was cleaner than his hideaway downstairs, but only marginally less austere. Just a bed with no bed hangings. A chair and a spindly-legged table before the empty fireplace, on the mantel of which were piled nearly as many volumes as on the bookcase in his so-called library. And a pair of tall windows, over which had been drawn silk draperies that might once have been scarlet or burgundy, but which had faded over time to a shade that Miles was tempted to call pink.

In any case, they now served to do little more than filter the light, though it was such a gloomy, damp morning that the room was still comparatively dim. Not so dim, however, that Miles had any trouble picking out the figure of his friend, propped up in bed with a tray across his lap, his eyes puffy and his nose redder than the draperies.

He looked as if he’d gone several rounds with a prizefighter and come out the loser—which only served to remind Miles of yesterday’s exchange about plants’ remarkable defensive abilities.

“Out,” Alistair rasped. “And tell that chit of a housemaid who answered the door she’ll need to look for a new place.”

Or at least, that’s what Miles thought he said. Owing to his congestion, some of the words were less than intelligible.

“Now, now.” Miles approached the bed. “You mustn’t blame her. You know how incorrigible I can be,” he said, again recalling what Daphne had said.

“Incorrigible,” Alistair agreed, though it sounded more like incorithabuh when he said it.

Miles managed not to smile. “It’s positively unpatriotic for an Englishman to have such a reaction to roses. I think you must be exaggerating your symptoms—the maid said Freddie got up to some mischief after she got away from me yesterday. I suspect you’re fancying yourself ill so you don’t have to face her.”

“Got away from you?” Alistair pushed himself higher on the pillows, the movement threatening to overset the tray. “Is that what you call it? Not ‘abandoning my sister to go chase after Miss Burke, right under the Duke of Raynham’s nose’? Freddie said you practically shoved her into Lord Cowell’s arms.”

“More of a gentle nudge really. Only there happened to be an uneven patch of ground just there. . . .”

“Enough.” He rummaged around the linens for his handkerchief and blew his nose like a trumpet blast—for dramatic effect, clearly. “My head aches too much for this conversation. I’ll have to kill you tomorrow.”

Miles nodded his understanding. “The thing is, by tomorrow there may be a bit of a queue.” He patted his breast pocket. “I’ve had another invitation, you see. From the Marquess of Ashborough.”

Some of the bleariness fled his friend’s face as he blinked. “An invitation. To a dawn appointment, you mean?”

Miles managed a laugh, but wished after the fact that he’d put in a bit more effort, made it somewhat more convincing. “Certainly not. A dinner invitation. A meal, I should add, at which we are to be joined by the Duke of Raynham and possibly Mr. Paris Burke.” In other words, the three most powerful and important men in Daphne’s life, excepting her father. “Tomorrow evening.”

What followed were a series of deliberate, careful movements. Alistair folded his handkerchief, set aside the tray, swung his legs out of bed, padded barefoot across the room, and drew back the drapery, though he was clad only in his nightshirt and his windows overlooked the street. At no point did he look Miles in the eye. “So, what you’re saying is, it would be a kindness if I were to kill you today instead.”

“Just so, old friend.”

Alistair nodded, his gaze still focused on the gray skies. “Over dinner last night, Georgie was full of some tale about you and a lady spotted together in the glasshouse, but I felt certain she’d made it up to deflect attention away from her sister’s misbehavior. Surely, I thought, surely even Miles would not be so careless, so indifferent to decorum, so much a prisoner of his—”

“Cock?” Miles suggested harshly. The even Miles bit had stung more than he liked to admit. He’d never expected it of Alistair.

Alistair spun. “I was going to say desires. We’re not schoolboys anymore, Miles.”

“No, clearly not.”

“I take it you’re not going to try to defend your behavior?”

“Would it matter? If I told you that Miss Burke showed me her sister’s collection of tropical specimens, under full view of anyone who cared to look, and that I acted the gentleman all the while, even when it seemed for a moment that she wanted to—well.” He broke off, trying not to think of her upturned face, her body pressed close to his. “Would you believe me?”

Alistair folded his arms over his chest and looked Miles up and down, all sternness. Then he heaved a sigh. “Of course I would. Good God—this is serious, isn’t it? If you were willing to listen to a lecture about plants . . .”