Kate whipped her head up to face him, fire flashing in her eyes. “And I suppose, then, that you think it is your place to decide Edwina’s fate. Do not forget, my lord, that even if you decide she will make a suitable”—she sneered the word—“Lady Bridgerton, she might choose otherwise.”
He looked down at her with the confidence of a male who is never crossed. “Should I decide to ask Edwina, she will not say no.”
“Are you trying to tell me that no woman has ever been able to resist you?”
He did not answer, just raised one supercilious brow and let her draw her own conclusions.
Kate wrenched her arm free and strode back to her stepmother, shaking with fury, resentment, and not a little bit of fear.
Because she had an awful feeling that he did not lie. And if he really did turn out to be irresistible…
Kate shuddered. She and Edwina were going to be in big, big trouble.
The next afternoon was like any following a major ball. The Sheffields’ drawing room was filled to bursting with flower bouquets, each one accompanied by a crisp white card bearing the name, “Edwina Sheffield.”
A simple “Miss Sheffield” would have sufficed, Kate thought with a grimace, but she supposed one couldn’t really fault Edwina’s suitors for wanting to make certain the flowers went to the correct Miss Sheffield.
Not that anyone was likely to make a mistake on that measure. Floral arrangements generally went to Edwina. In fact, there was nothing general about it; every bouquet that had arrived at the Sheffield residence in the last month had gone to Edwina.
Kate liked to think she had the last laugh, however. Most of the flowers made Edwina sneeze, so they tended to end up in Kate’s chamber, anyway.
“You beautiful thing,” she said, lovingly fingering a fine orchid. “I think you belong right on my bedstand. And you”—she leaned forward and sniffed at a bouquet of perfect white roses—“you will look smashing on my dressing table.”
“Do you always talk to flowers?”
Kate whirled around at the sound of a deep male voice. Good heavens, it was Lord Bridgerton, looking sinfully handsome in a blue morning coat. What the devil was he doing here?
No sense in not asking.
“What the dev—” She caught herself just in time. She would not let this man reduce her to cursing aloud, no matter how often she did it in her head. “What are you doing here?”
He raised a brow as he adjusted the huge bouquet of flowers he had tucked under his arm. Pink roses, she noted. Perfect buds. They were lovely. Simple and elegant. Exactly the sort of thing she’d choose for herself.
“I believe it’s customary for suitors to call upon young women, yes?” he murmured. “Or did I misplace my etiquette book?”
“I meant,” Kate growled, “how did you get in? No one alerted me to your arrival.”
He cocked his head toward the hall. “The usual manner. I knocked on your front door.”
Kate’s look of irritation at his sarcasm did not prevent him from continuing with, “Amazingly enough, your butler answered. Then I gave him my card, he took a look at it, and showed me to the drawing room. Much as I’d like to claim some sort of devious, underhanded subterfuge,” he continued, maintaining a rather impressively supercilious tone, “it was actually quite aboveboard and straightforward.”
“Infernal butler,” Kate muttered. “He’s supposed to see if we’re ‘at home’ before showing you in.”
“Maybe he had previous instructions that you would be ‘at home’ for me under any circumstances.”
She bristled. “I gave him no such instructions.”
“No,” Lord Bridgerton said with a chuckle, “I wouldn’t have thought so.”
“And I know Edwina didn’t.”
He smiled. “Perhaps your mother?”
Of course. “Mary,” she groaned, a world of accusation in the single word.
“You call her by her given name?” he asked politely.
She nodded. “She’s actually my stepmother. Although she’s really all I know. She married my father when I was but three. I don’t know why I still call her Mary.” She gave her head a little shake as her shoulders lifted into a perplexed shrug. “I just do.”
His brown eyes remained fixed on her face, and she realized she’d just let this man—her nemesis, really—into a small corner of her life. She felt the words “I’m sorry” bubbling on her tongue—a reflexive reaction, she supposed, for having spoken too freely. But she didn’t want to apologize to this man for anything, so instead she just said, “Edwina is out, I’m afraid, so your visit was for nothing.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he replied. He grasped the bouquet of flowers—which had been tucked under his right arm—with his other hand, and as he brought it forward Kate saw that it was not one massive bouquet, but three smaller ones.
“This,” he said, putting one of the bouquets down on a side table, “is for Edwina. And this”—he did the same with the second—“is for your mother.”
He was left with a single bouquet. Kate stood frozen with shock, unable to take her eyes off the perfect pink blooms. She knew what he had to be about, that the only reason he’d included her in the gesture was to impress Edwina, but blast it, no one had ever brought her flowers before, and she hadn’t known until that very moment how badly she’d wanted someone to do so.
“These,” he said finally, holding out the final arrangement of pink roses, “are for you.”
“Thank you,” she said hesitantly, taking them into her arms. “They’re lovely.” She leaned down to sniff them, sighing with pleasure at the thick scent. Glancing back up, she added, “It was very thoughtful of you to think of Mary and me.”
He nodded graciously. “It was my pleasure. I must confess, a suitor for my sister’s hand once did the same for my mother, and I don’t believe I’ve ever seen her more delighted.”
“Your mother or your sister?”
He smiled at her pert question. “Both.”
“And what happened to this suitor?” Kate asked.
Anthony’s grin turned devilish in the extreme. “He married my sister.”
“HmmPh. Don’t think history is likely to repeat itself. But—” Kate coughed, not particularly wanting to be honest with him but quite incapable of doing anything otherwise. “But the flowers are truly lovely, and—and it was a lovely gesture on your part.” She swallowed. This wasn’t easy for her. “And I do appreciate them.”
He leaned forward slightly, his dark eyes positively melting. “A kind sentence,” he mused. “And directed at me, no less. There now, that wasn’t so difficult, was it?”
Kate went from bending lovingly over the flowers to standing uncomfortably straight in an instant. “You do seem to have a knack for saying the exact wrong thing.”
“Only where you’re concerned, my dear Miss Sheffield. Other women, I assure you, hang on my every word.”
“So I’ve read,” she muttered.
His eyes lit up. “Is that where you’ve developed your opinions of me? Of course! The estimable Lady Whistledown. I should have known. Lud, I’d like to strangle the woman.”
“I find her rather intelligent and quite on the mark,” Kate said primly.
“You would,” he returned.
“Lord Bridgerton,” Kate ground out, “I’m sure you did not come calling to insult me. May I leave a message for Edwina for you?”
“I think not. I don’t particularly trust that it would reach her unadulterated.”
That was really too much. “I would never stoop to interfering with another person’s correspondence,” Kate somehow managed to say. Her entire body was shaking with rage, and if she’d been a less controlled sort of woman, her hands would surely have been wrapped around his throat. “How dare you imply otherwise.”
“When all is said and done, Miss Sheffield,” he said with annoying calmness, “I really don’t know you very well. What I do know consists of your fervent avowals that I will
never find myself within ten feet of your sister’s saintly presence. You tell me, would you feel confident to leave a note if you were me?”
“If you are attempting to gain my sister’s favor through me,” Kate replied icily, “you are not doing a very good job of it.”
“I’m aware of that,” he said. “I really shouldn’t provoke you. It’s not very well done of me, is it? But I’m afraid I just can’t help myself.” He grinned roguishly and held up his hands in a helpless manner. “What can I say? You do something to me, Miss Sheffield.”
His smile, Kate realized with dismay, was truly a force to be reckoned with. She suddenly felt faint. A seat…yes, what she needed to do was sit down. “Please, have a seat,” she said, waving at the blue damask sofa as she scrambled across the room to a chair. She didn’t particularly want him to linger, but she couldn’t very well sit without offering him a seat as well, and her legs were starting to feel awfully wobbly.
If the viscount thought oddly of her sudden burst of politeness, he did not say anything. Instead he removed a long black case off the sofa and placed it on a table, then sat down in its place. “Is that a musical instrument?” he queried, motioning to the case.
Kate nodded. “A flute.”
“Do you play?”
She shook her head, then cocked her head slightly and nodded. “I’m trying to learn. I took it up just this year.”
He nodded in reply, and that, apparently, was to be the end of the subject, because he then politely asked, “When do you expect Edwina to return?”
“Not for at least an hour, I should think. Mr. Berbrooke took her out for a ride in his curricle.”
“Nigel Berbrooke?” He practically choked on the name.
“Yes, why?”
“The man has more hair than wit. A great deal more.”
“But he’s going bald,” she couldn’t resist pointing out.
He grimaced. “And if that doesn’t prove my point, I don’t know what will.”
Kate had reached much the same conclusion about Mr. Berbrooke’s intelligence (or lack thereof), but she said, “Isn’t it considered bad form to insult one’s fellow suitors?”
Anthony let out a little snort. “It wasn’t an insult. It was the truth. He courted my sister last year. Or tried to. Daphne did her best to discourage him. He’s a nice enough fellow, I’ll grant you that, but not someone you’d want building you a boat were you stranded on a desert island.”
Kate had a strange and unwelcome image of the viscount stranded on a desert island, clothes in tatters, skin kissed by the sun. It left her feeling uncomfortably warm.