Before he could raise his hand to use Moreland’s brass knocker, the door opened.
Charlotte Windham stood before him in a fetching ensemble of soft green with a snug cream spencer. Her bonnet was a small-brimmed straw hat, and her reticule was a beaded confection that caught the midday sun.
“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Sherbourne.”
He tipped his hat, though her greeting was a bit lowering. “Who else would I be?”
“I was just going out.”
“Not without an escort, you weren’t. Might I offer myself in that capacity?”
Behind Miss Charlotte, a white-haired butler stared across the foyer as if the conversation were being conducted on somebody else’s front stoop in some other hemisphere.
“I’m merely off to visit a cousin. No escort—”
The butler cleared his throat. Loudly.
“Indulge me,” Sherbourne said, because clearly, Miss Charlotte had been prepared to strike off across town on her own. Even he knew that was not the done thing.
“I’ve changed my mind,” she said, taking Sherbourne’s arm and dragging him into the house. “Hodges, a tray in the blue parlor, please.”
“Very good, Miss.”
Hodges shot Sherbourne a look that promised doom to any caller who put his boots up on the furniture—or his hands on Miss Charlotte—and made a silent exit down the corridor.
“This way,” Miss Charlotte said. “If you’re here to curry favor with Moreland, you’d be better off accosting him at his club. Her Grace is occupied at the modiste’s, which means you’re stuck with me. You have two cups of tea, stay fifteen minutes, bore me to tears with chatter about the weather, then take your leave.”
“I came to see you, even if you do mistake giving a man orders for making small talk.”
She preceded him into a blue, white, and gilt parlor. A bowl of daisies graced the windowsill, and a lady’s work basket was open on a hassock.
“I’m simply reviewing the protocol with you. Her Grace has spoken well of you, which means you’ll have to blunder badly to ruin your reception by polite society.”
Miss Charlotte had left the door open, but she’d also assured Sherbourne that her aunt and uncle were not home. Had she done that on purpose?
“Were you attempting to blunder, Miss Charlotte? Leaving the house without an escort?”
She untied her bonnet ribbons and tried to pluck the hat from her head. Some hairpin or bit of hidden wire got caught in her coiffure, and the hat was thus stuck, half on, half off.
“Blunder by walking two streets from my own door without a chaperone, you mean? Drat this hat.”
“You’re making it worse.”
“A gentleman wouldn’t notice.”
How could Sherbourne not notice skeins of glossy red hair cascading around the lady’s shoulders? He moved close enough to grasp the bonnet.
“Hold still. I’ll have you free in a moment.”
“My objective was freedom. You’ve forced me to reschedule my outing.”
Sherbourne liked knowing how things worked, how parts fit and functioned together. Miss Charlotte’s bun had been a simple affair involving a chignon and some amber-tipped pins. To get the hat untangled, he had to loosen the chignon, which meant taking off his gloves.
“You were intent on larking about the streets of Mayfair on your own,” Sherbourne said, sliding a pin from her hair. “Being a woman of blindingly evident intelligence, you know such behavior will cause talk.”
“Maybe I was off to meet a lover.”
Another pin came loose, and he slipped it into his pocket. “Had you been intent on a tryst, you would have worn a plain cloak and bonnet, carried a market basket, and slipped out the back door. What is that scent?”
“Orange blossoms, mostly. You’ve undone me.”
He passed her the hat upside down, the pins piled in the crown. “You’re welcome.”
Though the sight of her left him undone too. Miss Charlotte was in a temper about something, and that put color in her cheeks and fire in her eyes—more fire than usual. Her hair fell nearly to her waist and shimmered in the sunshine streaming through the windows.
She was lovely—though she seemed oblivious to that fact, and to the impropriety of having her hair down while a gentleman paid a social call.
“I have come to a decision, Mr. Sherbourne,” she said, stalking across the room. “Perhaps your arrival was meant to modify my choice.”
“A gentleman aids a lady at every opportunity.” Or some such rot.
Miss Charlotte set the hat on the piano bench, stuck two hairpins in her mouth, and used both hands to bundle her hair up.
“I have decided to be ruined,” she said around the hairpins. “It’s either that or endure more years of being resented by the debutantes, proposed at by the dandies and prigs, and flirted with by the fortune hunters.”
“I’m sorry. My ability to translate the hairpin dialect is wanting. Did you say something about being ruined?” Deciding to be ruined, as if she’d decided to be a Roman centurion at a masked ball.
She twisted her hair this way and that, not braiding it, but looping it around itself and shoving a pin here or there. The whole business stayed up and looked as if some maid had spent an hour arranging it.
“I’m missing a hairpin.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because I count my hairpins, and this set was a gift from my aunt Arabella when I made my come out two hundred and forty-seven years ago.”
“Might we discuss your attempted self-ruin instead of your fashion accessories?”
She gave him a look. If he’d been eight years old, he would have produced the hairpin from his pocket, blushed, and stammered his remorse. He was past thirty and would keep that hairpin until the day he died.
“You want to discuss my failed attempt at ruin,” she said.
“My apologies for interfering with your schedule. Do you attempt ruin often, and might we sit while we don’t talk about the weather?”
She gestured to the sofa and took a place half a yard to Sherbourne’s right.
“I like you,” she said. “Somewhat. A little. I don’t dislike you.”
“My heart pounds with joy to hear it. I don’t dislike you either.”
Thank the gods of porcelain and silver, the tea cart rattled loudly as somebody pushed it along the corridor. Sherbourne thus knew to fall silent rather than expound about why he didn’t dislike Miss Charlotte Windham rather a lot.
A footman steered the tea cart into the parlor, and a maid came along to assist with setting the offerings on the low table before the sofa. The polite fussing gave Sherbourne a chance to consider possibilities and theories.
His mind, however, usually reliable during daylight hours, failed to focus on the facts as he knew them.
Charlotte Windham was seeking her own ruin. What the devil was she about?
*
Charlotte had hoped the ritual of the tea service would soothe her, but there Lucas Sherbourne sat, in morning attire that featured a waistcoat embroidered with more gold thread than some high church bishops wore at Easter services.
How could one be soothed when beholding such masculine splendor? His attire was distinctive, but so too was the sense of animal instincts prowling close to the surface of his personality. Sherbourne was alert, heedful of both danger and opportunity even in a duke’s drawing room. With him on the premises, Charlotte would never be bored, never feel invisible.
“You might not dislike me,” Charlotte said, checking the strength of the tea, “but many others find me…irksome. How do you take your tea?”
“Milk and sugar. I would have thought the shoe on the other foot. You find most of humanity irksome, if not most of creation.”
“People usually can’t help themselves when they are tiresome or ignorant. They do the best they can, that doesn’t mean they’re likeable. More sugar?”