“Your assessment of this man’s character and suitability are based on what you have heard, not what you have concluded from your own knowledge and experience. You condemn my poor paper for engaging in gossip when it’s about your family, yet, you seem able to embrace gossip wholeheartedly when it’s about someone you don’t wish to like. A bit hypocritical, don’t you think?”
“That is ridiculous.”
“Is it? You profess to despise rumor and innuendo, and yet those criteria seem to form the entire basis of your opinion of the man.”
“And?”
“Don’t you think you should meet him for yourself before you judge his character?”
“I cannot do that.” The very idea appalled him. “It isn’t possible.”
She laughed again, lifting her hands in a gesture of bafflement. “Why not?”
“We have never been introduced. No introduction has been offered to me on his behalf, and if it were, I should refuse it. Even my mother would not suggest it.”
She made a sound of impatience and turned her attention back to the bookshelves. “You aristocrats and your rules,” she muttered as she pulled a volume halfway out and glanced at the title. “So damnably silly.”
“Perhaps they seem so to you, but they exist nonetheless, and I must follow them, for unlike you, I am unwilling to suffer the consequences of not doing so.”
She shoved the book back into place and turned to him again. “How did your mother meet him, then, if these rules are so important?”
“She wanted her portrait painted. She commissioned him. Then she decided to have him teach her to paint in oils. One thing led to another, and here we are.”
“She was attracted to him and she wanted a fling, you mean.” She laughed. “How delightfully naughty of her. Oh, Duke, I do like your mother!”
“I’m gratified to hear it, but I don’t see what is delightful about having a fling.”
Even as he said it, he knew how idiotic that comment was. So did she.
“Don’t you?” Her hazel eyes sparkled with mischief. “Don’t you, really?”
He stiffened, sensing danger to his newly acquired equanimity, and he feared he was every bit the hypocrite she’d accused him of being as desire for her flickered to life again. “I would prefer not to discuss the circumstances of my mother’s fling, if you don’t mind. She is, after all, my mother.”
“It’s terribly romantic, isn’t it?” Miss Deverill went on, oblivious to his request for a change of subject. “Having a fling, and then falling in love.”
“I don’t see how,” he mumbled, shifting his weight, keenly uncomfortable with this topic. “Since one can hardly call it love.”
She sighed. “I fail to see how your mother could ever think you a hopeless romantic.”
Henry couldn’t see it either, for his thoughts about the woman in front of him were anything but. His gaze slid down, his body began to burn. “The material point,” he said, jerking his gaze back up to her face, “is that no conversation between Foscarelli and myself can take place. Propriety forbids it.” As he spoke, he was well aware of how haughty he sounded, but it seemed his only refuge at the moment. “I suppose you think me overly fastidious.”
She pulled out another book, opened it, and began to scan the pages. “That’s one way of putting it.”
That dry rejoinder, a reminder of his so-called hypocrisy, raised his defenses at once. “Foscarelli is a rake of the first water, with many feminine conquests. He is also, to put it crudely, on the make. If I allow myself to be introduced to him, I send a message to the world that I approve of such behavior. I cannot do that. And even if I did meet him,” he went on as she opened her mouth to argue, “it would hardly change my opinion. If a man has behaved like a wolf, if he has preyed like a wolf, and feasted like a wolf, does it matter if he baas and bleats to me as if he were a sheep?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said in exasperation and snapped the book closed, “this man may soon be a member of your family.”
“I would prefer not to be reminded of that possibility, a possibility, I might add, that you are supposed to be helping me prevent from becoming reality.”
She made a face and put the book away. “That’s proving somewhat difficult, as you might imagine. You are her son. If your efforts to persuade her against this course have failed, I’m not sure what you expect me to do.”
“Point out his flaws, stress his reputation. Urge caution. You are Lady Truelove’s editor. One might infer you are also her confidante. Stress your friendship with your columnist and her trust in you. That might persuade Mama to listen.”
Miss Deverill shook her head. “It’s clear to me—it has been all along—that advising your mother not to marry him is a waste of time.”
“Because people don’t want advice,” he said, remembering her words at breakfast, words even now he did not want to accept. “They want reassurance of what they’ve already decided.”
“Just so. Which is why I strongly advised her to tie up her money. The fact that she didn’t follow that advice, withhold a dowry, and restrict him to an allowance surprises me, I confess. Your mother seems a keenly intelligent woman. I don’t understand why she agreed to give him so much money as a marriage portion.”
