“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 naive.”

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.”

Hallie shook her head. She picked up the teapot on the side table and poured herself a cup. She sipped it as she looked over at Elgin Sloane, Lord Renfrew. “I have been thinking that females shouldn’t be allowed into society or into the company of men until they are twenty-five.”

He laughed, a dark brow climbing up to what she’d always considered a highly intelligent forehead. “A marvelous jest, my dear. You know very well that no gentleman would wish to wed a female that old.”

“How old are you?”

“I am thirty-one.”

Hallie sat down and drummed her fingertips on the arm of the chair. “My uncle always said that men needed more years to leaven than women. One could think you were far too leavened now.”

“I am considered a young man.”

“And twenty-five is old for a woman?”

He had to regain control, not that he’d had any sort of firm control over her yet, truth be told.

She toasted him with her teacup. “Goodness, you were far too old for me before, but I was such an infatuated young fool I never even noticed those wrinkles around your eyes. Or perhaps they weren’t there a year and a half ago.”

His hand flew to his face, then, not looking away from her, he slowly lowered his hand back to his side. “I have always loved the way you joke. You will keep me humble, Hallie, a good thing for a man.”

“This is really too much, sir, since-”

There was a horrible crashing sound from the back of the house. Hallie was out of her chair and through the drawing room doorway in an instant.

The kitchen, Lord Renfrew thought, that dreadful noise had come from the kitchen. A man didn’t appear to best advantage in the middle of a mess in a kitchen. Best to remain here, above all the chaos, calm and clear-eyed.

“Good grief, who are you? What’s going on?”

CHAPTER 22

“I, sir, am here to visit Miss Carrick. I believe she just ran back to the kitchen, some sort of female disaster.”

Female disaster? Jason stared long and hard at the elegant vision standing at languid ease in front of him, thinking that he didn’t particularly care for the latest gentlemen’s style. The waist looked too nipped in, the tails too long, altogether unpractical, at least if one were mucking out stalls.

Jason heard a shriek. When he ran into the kitchen, it was to see Cook, Petrie, Martha, Angela, and Hallie bent over coughing, covered with the settling smoke still billowing up from the new Macklin stove. Since he and Hallie had been assured that this modern wonder would be in use until the turn of the century, Jason didn’t believe this to be a propitious beginning. He saw that there was no fire, only smoke. He opened the kitchen door and the three windows and waved.

“Is everyone all right?”

Black tears streaked down Petrie’s face. He was wringing his filthy hands. “Oh, Master Jason, look at what that smoking monster has done to my linen, all spotless only three hours ago, and now look.”

Martha poked Petrie in the shoulder. “Here now, Mr. Petrie, don’t cry or I’ll tell Mr. Hollis meself-myself. Get yourself together-be a butler.”

Jason hoped Petrie wouldn’t throw Martha onto the still-smoking stove.

“Anise seed won’t help get us clean, I’m afraid,” Hallie said, wiping a hand across her face. “Don’t worry, Petrie, Martha is good with all sorts of stains. Angela, your face is a bit black.”