Never Trust a Rake

‘Nothing of the sort. I made a list of your best features, in an attempt to persuade you that you had as much chance of dazzling a man as Miss Waverly, should you care to...’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter anyway, because Mr Crimmer soon settled his hash.’

‘Who is Mr Crimmer?’ His eyes narrowed on her intently. ‘Is he the suitor you were crying over at Miss Twining’s?’

‘Oh, no. He’s not my suitor at all. It was when Lord... I mean, the man who had said your eyesight must be deteriorating said that he could have understood it if it had been Mildred up beside you, because she was a...I think his exact words were a game pullet, that Mr Crimmer, who is in love with my cousin Mildred, you know, lifted him off his chair by his lapels, bundled him out of the house and threw him down the front steps.’

She paused, peeping up at him cheekily over the top of her languidly waving fan. Her eyes were brimful of laughter.

She was not angry about the incident. If anything, he would have said she was vastly amused by the antics of the boors who had invaded her aunt’s house. He leaned back against the wall and folded his arms across his chest.

‘Pray continue,’ he drawled. ‘I simply cannot wait to hear what happened next.’

It was, he realised, completely true. He was affecting boredom, but he did not think he had enjoyed a conversation with any other female half so much during the entire two weeks he had been deliberately avoiding her. Not that he’d had anything that could accurately have been described as a conversation. He had definitely attempted to start several, with various young ladies who could lay claim to both impeccable lineage and trim figures, but they always petered out into a sequence of ‘yes, my lord’ and ‘no, my lord’ and ‘oh, if you say so, then I am sure you must be right, my lord’. It had been like consuming a constant diet of bread and milk.

Running into Henrietta Gibson was like suddenly finding a pot of mustard on hand, to lend a piquancy to the unremittingly bland dishes he’d been obliged to sample of late.

‘Well, the man who’d called Mildred a game pullet was rather annoyed to be treated with such disrespect by a mere cit,’ Henrietta continued, ‘and informed Mr Crimmer of the fact in the most robust terms. And Mr Crimmer replied that a real gentleman would never speak of a lady with such disrespect, to which that man replied that Mildred was no lady, only a tradesman’s daughter.’

‘You heard all this?’

‘Oh, yes. Though I had to throw up the sash in the front room and lean out, because the front steps were a bit crowded with all the other, erm, gentlemen who had come with the man who’d called Mildred a name he oughtn’t. And I had the pleasure of seeing Mr Crimmer plant a nice flush hit that sent the so-called gentleman reeling right out into the road. After that, though,’ she said with a moue of disappointment, ‘it descended into the kind of scrap that little boys of about eight get into.’

He raised one eyebrow again. He had never, ever heard a female of good birth use boxing cant as though it were perfectly natural.

‘Oh, you know the kind of thing,’ she replied, completely misinterpreting the cause of that raised eyebrow. ‘Kicking and grappling, and flailing arms without anyone really doing the other any damage.’

‘No science,’ he said, to see if she really understood what she was saying.

‘None whatever,’ she said with a rueful shake of the head. ‘Although the other spectators appeared to enjoy it tremendously. There was a great deal of wagering going on.’

‘May I ask what your aunt was doing while this impromptu mill was taking place on her front doorstep and you were hanging out of the window cheering on your champion?’

‘I was not cheering,’ she said, adopting a haughty demeanour. ‘And he was not my champion. And as for my aunt, well,’ she said, the laughter returning to her eyes, ‘she thought about having the vapours, I think, but only for about a minute or two, because nobody was taking any notice of her. And she is a very practical person, too. So once she had got over the shock of having her drawing room taken over by a pack of yahoos, she sent the butler to fetch some of the male servants from the houses round and about, to make them all go away.’