What did he mean, anxious to please? She could be bad-tempered in the morning. Maybe she was anxious to please when she wanted something badly, Hallie thought as she looked up to see Petrie carrying the lovely silver tray Jason’s mother had given them, his face still black as night. Oh dear. She ran to look in the mirror over the small table and nearly shrieked. She’d known what had to be in the mirror, but the fact of her black face-she raised her skirts to run to her bedchamber when she stopped cold. She smiled at Petrie. “We,” she said, patting his arm, “will make an entrance. Ah, do I look as toothsome as you do, Petrie?”

“Surely you must consult the dictionary, Miss Hallie. We both look like critters escaped from the mud flats. There was no time for me to set myself to rights since one can’t leave a gentleman waiting for his tea. Oh dear, oh dear, your face, Miss Hallie, my face-This is disastrous. Whatever will the gentleman think?”

“I, for one, can’t wait to find out.” She walked into the drawing room, her stride long as a boy’s, all possible because her full skirt was slit like very wide-cut trousers, giving Jason a smile scary enough to curl his toes. “I had Petrie bring the tea. Ah, does that please you, Jason?”

CHAPTER 23

Jason nearly fell over. A siren’s voice coming out of a filthy face. Lord Renfrew rose quickly to his feet, nearly en pointe. He said in a loud voice, “I am very pleased, my dear, very pleased indeed. I always believed you were delightfully accommodating.”

“Did you really, my lord? How very gallant of you to say so. May I ask why?”

Lord Renfrew gurgled deep in his throat.

She preened, black face and all.

So she’d heard that, had she? Jason walked to her, stopped not a half-foot from her nose and reached out his hand. He began twisting a long tangled hank of hair that fell nearly to her breast. He leaned closer, his warm breath on her cheek, lust in his eyes. “You smell like smoke.”

She batted her eyelashes, but didn’t move, felt his fingers wrapping round and round her hair. She said, “Does it displease you, Jason, the smoke? I do so ever wish to please you.”

“I will think about that.” He tugged her hair, then stepped back. “Please don’t sit down in that dirty dress, Hallie. Our furniture is new and it would be a shame to dirty it up so soon.”

Lord Renfrew pulsed with questions, none of which he could ask in Hallie’s presence, dammit. He cleared his throat. She looked over at him. A witch, she looked like a witch. What if she wanted to touch him? Perhaps he should step back so she couldn’t easily reach him. “Perhaps, Miss Carrick-Hallie-you’d best go to your bedchamber and prepare yourself.”

“Prepare myself for what exactly? Oh, you mean the way I do for Jason?”

Jason shook his head, wagged his finger at her. “You baggage, where are your manners? You will shock poor Lord Renfrew. Who did you say you were, Lord Renfrew? A longtime friend of Miss Carrick’s? Perhaps a friend of her father’s? You don’t have a grandfather still living, do you, Hallie?”

“No, my father’s father died many years ago, long before I was born. My father became Baron Sherard when he was only seventeen. Genny’s father died when I was only five.”

Lord Renfrew said, “I came into my title two years ago. I am Viscount Renfrew, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” Jason said, “but it has a nice ring to it.”

“I would like my tea.”

“Certainly,” Hallie said, pouring a cup and nearly spilling it in his lap when Lord Renfrew said to Jason, “I am a very close friend of Miss Carrick’s. Indeed, it would be more accurate to say that we were beyond close. I never met her father, although I would have met both her parents if things had progressed in the smooth way they were meant to progress.”

Hallie said to Jason, “It’s hard to be smooth when one is picking flowers in another garden, don’t you think?”

The air pulsed with hot silence, until Jason said, voice limp as a dead lily, “So you excel at growing flowers, my lord? Perhaps you will give us advice on what to do with our gardens. My mother planted the primroses beneath the front windows. Alas, neither Hallie nor I have much of an eye for blooms.”

“I don’t either,” Lord Renfrew said, and added a fourth spoonful of sugar to his tea.

“Then why would you be picking flowers? Oh, I see, you are a romantic, not a connoisseur.”

Lord Renfrew stirred another spoonful of sugar into his tea. It was nearly painful to watch him drink it, but Jason nodded and continued to smile.

“Look here,” Lord Renfrew said, waving his teacup, so full of sugar Hallie was surprised he could lift it, “none of this is to the point.”

“What is the point?” Jason asked politely.

“It is very strange to have a lady standing whilst the two of us are sitting.”

“Possibly so,” Jason said. “However, unlike you, I am not slurping tea in a lady’s presence. I think Hallie must realize how thoughtful and polite I am, thus making her more accommodating.” He gave her a smile that would have made Mrs. Millsom swoon again.

Lord Renfrew saw that smile, knew there was power in that damned smile, and it burned him to his feet. Bastard, damned toad of a second-son bastard. He’d always recognized that the Sherbrooke twins were considered very handsome men, but since he himself wasn’t an affliction to the female eye and had always been admired by both men and women-perhaps women a bit more than men, as he’d been told many times-he hadn’t begrudged them their additional dollop of physical beauty. He did now. He saw the clout of that beautiful face aimed at Hallie, and hated the man to his toes. He wanted to seduce her, he wanted her money. This wasn’t to be borne. “Miss Carrick, I am Lord Grimsby’s guest, Viscount Merlin Grimsby of Abbott Grange. I am here to ask you to attend a ball this Thursday evening, a ball in my honor, and you would be my special guest.”

Jason leapt to his feet. “A ball? Did you say a ball? I haven’t been invited to a ball since my return to England. I would be delighted to attend, my lord. I shall bring Hallie with me. Do you have a suitable gown, Hallie?”

“Will it be a costume ball, sir?”

“No. It will be a regular sort of ball. Actually, Mr. Sherbrooke, I only-”

“I believe I packed away a lovely medieval maiden’s gown in one of my trunks. A pity it isn’t a costume ball.”

“I am certain the gown is lovely, Miss Carrick-Hallie-but it is, as I said, a regular sort of ball. Mr. Sherbrooke, about the ball, I can only invite-”

“I know what you are thinking, my lord,” Jason said, “and you are right to be concerned that I have been out of civilized England for too long, that I have nothing fashionable to wear. I will ask my brother. He’s the viscount, you know, and he is always a well-dressed fellow. Sometimes he gives me his last-year britches, sometimes even his coats. Very few stains since his valet is such a superb fellow.

“As for Hallie, I believe my brother’s wife could lend her something. Don’t worry, my lord, both of us, I fancy, will look quite dashing.”

“Miss Carrick is rich; she has many gowns, all lovely. Besides, since she is rich, surely she wouldn’t lower herself to borrow anything from your blasted sister-in-law.”

Hallie said, “I must say it’s ever so predictable you remembered the groats in my pockets, though I’m not surprised. I think a ball would be delightful. Thank you for inviting us. Jason, do you know Lord Grimsby?”

“Oh yes, though I haven’t seen him in a long time, since James and I were at Oxford and observed him with a delightful young lady who, I believe, was no relation to him at all.”

“Now, see here, Mr. Sherbrooke. Lord Grimsby wasn’t all that old then.”

Hallie said, “Isn’t Lord Grimsby married?”

“I was being indelicate,” Jason said. “When James and I were quite small, Lord Grimsby let us ride his prize pigs, big pigs, you understand, so fat they could barely walk and thus weren’t hazardous to the health of two three-year-old boys.”