Page 35 of A Very Bellamy Christmas

“Is she what, Kathryn?”

“Your target.”

He gave vent to an explosive sigh. “Lord, but you’re persistent! You’re like a walking, talking, nagging burr in skirts.”

“And you are avoiding the question, which can only mean I’ve hit on the truth. I should probably warn our host of your intentions.”

“Bloody hell!” he muttered, pushed beyond civility by her harping. “You can stop teasing yourself on the subject, Kathryn. I’d have to be desperate indeed to foist my attentions on such a drab, downtrodden little dab of a female.” Shelton scowled, furious that she had driven him to utter such unkind words. While it was true the countess’s companion had given him a look of near loathing in the drawing room, there was no excuse for what he had just said.

“That was a cruel thing to say, Shelton.” There was no humor in her voice now.

Andrew’s ears heated and he hoped it was too dark to see the flush that was no doubt coloring his face. “Haven’t you heard that I’m an unprincipled cad?” he taunted. “What else do you expect?”

“Even for you that was low.”

It had been.

“Her name is Miss Martin,” Kathryn said. “Don’t you know her?”

“Would I have asked you if I did?” he shot back irritably.

“I’m not sure about that,” she murmured.

He frowned. “Just what do—”

“I know she is a desperate woman,” she went on, talking over him as if he was not there.

The woman he’d seen earlier had looked scornful and haughty, but not especially desperate. “Why do you think she is desperate?”

“Only a desperate woman would take a position working for my mother.”

He barked a laugh. “Such filial devotion. That’s rather a, er, grim assessment of your mother.”

“Is it?” She gave him a slyly amused look. “You met her earlier in the drawing room.”

“Touché.”

“So, what do you think of her?”

“I think she has good reason to dislike me.”

“I don’t mean my mother. Even an idiot could guess that. I meant Miss Martin.”

“Should I think something about her?”

She shrugged.

He picked a shred of tobacco off his tongue and flicked it away before saying, “I assume she is some poor relative?”

“No, her father was Viscount Clayton.”

Clayton. Andrew vaguely recalled the name but could bring no face to mind. “What’s she doing working as a companion?”

“Her father died without a son and the new viscount—a distant cousin—is a cheeseparing villain who tossed her out. And so she had to leave her family home and earn her crust.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know her,” he said, amused by her description of the man.

“I don’t, but I know about her situation.”