“You heard it already this morning. ‘She’ll be hunted down like a rat.’ ”
That brought her to a halt. “Uncle Simon said that?”
“Yes. He was worried about your, er, lack of experience in the wicked ways of London, not for long, naturally, since he had a new scientific journal that had just arrived in the post.”
“Hunted down like a rat. What an image that brings to mind.” She started to laugh. “Hunted down like a rat,” she gasped, and held her stomach she laughed so hard.
“It has a certain effect,” James said. “My father laughed his head off too.”
She was still laughing as she walked to the door. She said over her shoulder, now hiccupping, “Tell me, James, if finances don’t conform to my meager female abilities, then what does?”
He said, his voice deep and rich, “You would have been the parfait gentil knight.”
That brought her up short. Her face flushed with lovely color. She opened her mouth, then closed it. She nearly ran to the door, threw a big grin at him, and waved her hand. “You should rest now, James. I will see you tomorrow, if, that is, you don’t mind me coming to visit you without an escort of twenty brawny young men to protect me from you and all the gossips,” and she laughed some more, the witch, and was gone.
He could hear her whistling. She’d left him before he’d said what he’d had to say.
He cursed to the empty room. But not for long because Corrie’s departure meant Juliette’s return. His father gave him a look, and left him to his fate, which included Juliette’s mother. James wished Petrie would come in and shave him again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CORRIE ARRIVED AT the Sherbrooke town house the following morning to be told by Willicombe that the younger lordship was in the estate room, doing a bit of work to resharpen his brain.
“He doesn’t need papers to sharpen his brain, he needs a good argument,” Corrie said, and waved Willicombe away when he would have announced her.
She opened the door quietly to see James sitting at his father’s desk, a piece of paper in his right hand, a pen in his left hand, his head resting on the desktop. He was sound asleep.
She started to back out of the room, when he jerked up, stared at her, and said, “It’s about time you got here.”
“Why aren’t you in bed?”
He stretched, rose, and stretched again, then yawned.
“You’ve lost weight, James. I will speak to your mother about this.”
His arms dropped to his sides. “Don’t worry. My mother is stuffing food down my gullet every hour on the hour. You lost weight as well. Where have you been?”
“I chanced to meet Judith McCrae, you know, she’s the girl who’s very interested in Jason, if I don’t miss my guess. Of course, every girl in London is interested in both you and Jason, but she seems different, more suited to him, perhaps.”
Whatever that meant. He said, “She’s the niece of Lady Arbuckle. How did you meet her?”
/> “She was coming out of a milliner’s shop with Lady Arbuckle. They were having a very intense discussion, but when Judith saw me, she was all smiles. I don’t think that Lady Arbuckle was pleased to see me. I suppose Judith knows that I’m a childhood friend and thus someone to be cultivated.”
“Jason hasn’t spoken much about her lately.”
“No wonder, since his brother disappeared and could very well have been killed.”
“I think he quite likes her too. Now that he sees I’m well again, he’ll resume his course with her.”
“I wonder what course that will be. Was Juliette camping out in the drawing room when you woke up this morning?”
“Well, she and her mother did visit not long after breakfast. I was in bed.” He struck only a very slight pose since he was still too weak to goad her to his normal standards. “Do you know, I believe she enjoyed my company, her mother sitting comfortably in the corner, benignly watching the tableau.”
“And I don’t suppose you enjoyed all that dripping attention? All the cooing? Did she smooth her palm over your poor brow?”
“I can’t recall a single coo, except maybe from her mother.”
“Well, yes, that makes sense. You’re the heir, after all. You know, James, I really can’t imagine that she would want to marry you.”