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“Then you are unkind,” Lady Charity said.
“Quite the contrary. It is only that I would not wish to be absented from your beauty, not even for a moment, as you are quite the most lovely and vivacious in attendance here tonight.” Lord Wentwell looked at her expecting to see the preening debutante, but instead, there was a smolder in her eyes; fire upon the sea.
“Do you think to turn my head with your cleverness? Your words are rehearsed, Sir. Do you repeat them to each young lady you meet?” the lady said lifting her chin a bit. “Or does the delivery vary?”
She studied at him through narrowed eyes. “I warn you, your honeyed tongue will not work on me,” she said, but the flush of her cheeks belayed her words.
“As you will. But if we shall speak of honey and tongues,” he said softly. “I shall be very kind, indeed.” His voice was a low purr.
Lady Charity took a step back, snapped her fan shut and brandished it before her as she spoke. “You are a rake, sir. Both unkind and dishonest in truth,” she said loftily, but he noticed she did not move significantly away, and her color was high, but not a true blush. He gathered that she was enjoying the interplay as much as he, and he wanted to test the limits of their interaction. It was, after all, not her first season.
“Youdowound me,” he intoned.
“You are easily injured then, Charity said. “I would not have thought a gentleman of your experience would not be so fragile.”
“And I would think a lady of such verve would thirst for more than punch,” he said.
The heat of a blush colored her face fully now. “You are too forward,” she said bringing up her fan to hide her face and turned as if to leave.
“Is that so? I think I am not forward enough, but upon your word, I shall desist. But do enlighten me. How do you find the soiree, this fine eve?”
She stuttered for a moment at the swift change of subject, and then caught her balance. “It is pleasant,” she replied.
“Ah, for a lady bent on honesty, you do bend the truth. Tell me, what does my lady truly wish for this night?”
“An honest conversation, perhaps an honest gentleman, but I despair. I shall find neither here, certainly not in such trappings as you employ.”
“Am I not honest when I extoll your beauty?”
She ignored the complement entirely and said, “Even if you are honest, you hide it well.”
“And I venture, that your plea for honesty is but a ploy.”
“I assure you, it is not.”
He pulled a handkerchief from his coat, and waved it about, affecting a much more foppish manner than he usually employed, as he whispered conspiratorially, “Oh, but what a cad I would be if I said that a lady’s dress was ill fitting or that her maid ought to be flogged for the bird’s nest that she left upon her mistress head.
Charity nearly snorted with laughter as she followed his eyes to Mrs. Thompson, who did indeed look as if she wore a grey tangle of a bird’s nest upon her head.
“For shame. She is our hostess,” Charity said with little censure.
His voice lowered to a secretive whisper and leaned close. She did not pull away from him this time, and he breathed in the scent of her. “I shall keep your secret,” he said.
“What secret?” Her face was wrinkled in that quizzical frown that he had begun to enjoy.
“I know you are not parched as you implied to Colonel Ranier, “but rather, perhaps as floating in punch as that poor potted plant.”
“Now, that is surely not honesty, but cruelty,” she said.
“To the flooded plant, for certain” he said. And her lips quirked in amusement.
“Still, you should not say it.”
“And the lady craved honesty.”
Lady Charity tossed another look over her shoulder to her mother. Wentwell realized that she was indeed closely chaperoned, and he wished to see the unencumbered girl who was so bright and forthright last summer, without her mother standing by. His heart went out to Lady Charity as he realized her predicament. He attempted to walk with her a bit, to move her out of her mother’s direct line of sight, but she side stepped him, staying in her mother’s view, and he smiled indulgently. “Perhaps then, you would take it upon yourself to teach me,” he said.
“Teach you? What would I teach?” she asked, her face screwing up in the most adorable frown of confusion. Almost immediately she wiped the expression from her face, and the cool mask was pulled upon her face once again. She was once more as bland as the rest of theTon. Oh how he wanted to see that unguarded wonder upon her face again, and perhaps more.
