“Now, you see here, Mr. Sweaty-Breath, I can do almost anything at all, I—”
Hallie was laughing. Lord Renfrew heard that sweet laugh quite clearly. He’d always liked her laugh. Toward the end, though, she hadn’t laughed as much. He waited.
“It’s all right, Martha. Petrie will soon see how very talented you are. Let’s go upstairs. Don’t worry, Angela, the mare got the skirt, not me. I should have been paying more attention. I left Jason holding his stomach, laughing his head off, the moron.”
“A moment, Hallie. You have a visitor in the drawing room.”
Petrie inserted himself between Angela and Martha. “I was going to inform her, Mrs. Tewksbury. Indeed, I am standing right here, preparing to inform her of her visitor in the drawing room. You did not give me a chance, and Martha here—but all’s well, really.” He pumped up his lungs. “Miss Hallie, there is a visitor to see you in the drawing room.”
“A visitor?” Hallie asked. “Oh, you mean Corrie is here to visit? Yes, I remember. Give her some tea, Angela, and I will join her in but a moment. I am not ready to be seen.”
“But Hallie—”
“I’ll be right back, Angela.”
Lord Renfrew heard her quick steps up the stairs. Or maybe that was her poorly educated, too-young lady’s maid. The older lady with all the lace marching from her waist to her neck hadn’t told her his name, nor had the butler with the lovely voice. She would probably find out though before she came back downstairs. He didn’t know if that would be good or bad, though he always preferred surprise. He always had the advantage when he did the surprising. He walked to the fireplace, looked at himself in the mirror, knew that he looked elegant, beautifully garbed and as handsome as a minor god. He seated himself again, sipped his tea, and waited.
To his surprise, it wasn’t ten minutes before Hallie appeared in the drawing room doorway, a bit out of breath. She saw him and stopped dead in her tracks.
“You’re not Corrie.”
He gave her a smile that had once burned her to her toes. She looked strange. It was that full skirt, that strange-looking shirt and vest she was wearing. Why was she dressed like a Romany gypsy?
She said, “I hurried because I thought it was Corrie visiting. Both Angela and Petrie are in the kitchen trying to fix Cook’s new stove. Had I known it was you, I would have taken my time.”
“It is all right, Hallie. You look lovely.”
She hadn’t meant that at all, the conceited buffoon. “Lord Renfrew. What the devil are you doing here, sir?”
Not an auspicious beginning. On the other hand, he would have been a fool to expect otherwise. “It is wonderful to see you again, Hallie. Won’t you call me Elgin again, my dear?”
He strolled over to her, forcing her to look up because he was tall. He took her hand before she realized what he was about, and kissed the inside of her wrist, licking where he’d kissed. Hallie jerked her hand back. Before, so long before, she would have gone pale and hot with excitement. “What are you doing here, sir?”
He wanted to slap her. “I am here to see you, naturally. I have come to beg your forgiveness for my errant stupidity.”
She nodded. “Yes, you were excessively stupid. I suppose it means something that you can admit to your perfidy now and apologize for it. However, I have no intention of forgiving you for the entire length of my lifetime, so take yourself away.”
“No, not yet. Give me but another moment, Hallie. You were always a kind girl, sweet-natured—”
“Don’t forget naïve.”
He sighed deeply, walked back to the fireplace, knowing he presented an excellent impression, knowing she would be blind if she didn’t admire him, and turned slowly to lean back against the mantel, his arms crossed over his chest. “How very sorry I was for the loss of your trust in me. It was all a mistake, a dreadful mistake that happened because I was taken in by a woman who was more experienced than I, a simple man from the country. I was weak, I admit it. This is no excuse, pray don’t think it is. The fact is that I was weak and was led astray. That woman is no longer in my heart or in my mind.”
“That was certainly fortunate, since you then married that poor girl in York. Do I have that right?”
“Ah, my poor little Anne. She died nearly a year ago, you know, so unexpectedly, leaving me and her father bereft.”
“I am sorry. I had heard she died late this past fall.”
“The time has passed so slowly, my despair so deep, it could be ten years,” he said. “After her tragic death I could not look backward or forward. Only recently have I felt the moments of life flicker again within me.”
“I had forgotten how very lovely you speak. Such eloquence, such grace.”
“It is not kind to mock a man who’s known such pain. What I said is true.”
“Was she as young as I was when you married her?”
“She was eighteen, a woman who knew her own mind, a woman grown.”