“I didn’t invite myself! Good heavens, pushing in like that would be the height of bad manners.”
“Somehow,” he muttered, glaring at her, “I doubt if that fact has ever stopped you before.”
“Cassie asked me to come, you impossible man!”
He blinked, startled, his frustration faltering a notch in the wake of that information. “What? She didn’t discuss it with me.”
There must have still been some skepticism in his voice, and she heaved a sigh. Reaching for the handbag hooked over her arm, she opened it and pulled out a letter. “Your sister wrote to me,” she said, waving the slip of paper under his nose, “and asked for my help. I got her letter in this morning’s post.”
“Help with what?”
“Her dinner party tomorrow night. She invited three of the most prominent families in the county to dinner, I understand, but once the deed was done, she must have panicked. It’s a perfectly understandable feeling, of course, for it’s her first time hosting such an affair. She wrote to me, confessed she felt in over her head, and begged me to come and assist her. I was delighted to do so.”
He stared at her, the last of his ire fading away in the wake of that information. What was it about this woman, he wondered in utter bafflement, that made him so often act like a prize idiot? And more importantly, why did her talent there only make him want her more? He was a sensible man, rational and even-keeled. He wasn’t the sort to lose his temper or reason with emotion rather that facts. Never had a woman made him feel so off-balance, so out of control, so absurdly vulnerable.
Delia reached out, breaking into these grim ruminations as she shoved the letter into the front pocket of his filthy tweed jacket, crumpling it in the process. “Read her letter for yourself, if you don’t believe me. Now, since it is less than ninety minutes to dinner, I’m going to go find my room, bathe, and change. Then I’m going to see Cassie and determine what I can do to help make her party a smashing success.”
She turned and stalked away, hips swaying and skirts churning, reminding him of their very first meeting when he’d likened her to a tornado.
Under the arbor, the tornado paused to level his defenses one last time. “As for you,” she said, her blue eyes glinting like steel in the evening twilight, “you can go hang.”
There was nothing for it, of course. He had to apologize.
“Lift your chin, my lord, if you would.”
Morgan’s voice intruded, and Simon complied, tilting his head back so that his valet could shave his neck.
How many times, he wondered, thoroughly aggravated with himself, was he going to act like a fool in front of Delia and be obliged to apologize for it? Too many to count, he suspected, if he remained near her much longer. Worse, he’d have to get her alone to offer said apology, and that, he was already appreciating, would be a serious test of his hard-won willpower and restraint.
Morgan set aside the razor. “There we are, my lord,” he said, wiping away the traces of shaving soap from Simon’s face and neck. “I’ve laid out white-tie for you this evening, of course,” he added, nodding to the clothes that had been placed carefully on the bed. “Which studs and links would you like?”
“White-tie?” Simon echoed as he untied the sash of his dressing robe. “Is formal dress really necessary?”
The valet looked at him with patient gravity, reminding him—not for the first time in the six months of their acquaintance—that when it came to the wardrobe of a gentleman, he knew far more than Simon on the subject. “An ordinary evening suitmightbe considered tolerable when dining only with one’s own sister,” he said, expressing again his disapproval of Simon’s usual attire for the dinner table. A viscount, Morgan felt, was above the standards of ordinary, middle-class mortals. “But you are dining with a countess.”
“Don’t I know it?” he acknowledged with a sigh. “And when one has a countess to dinner, white-tie is de rigueur.”
Morgan, accustomed to Simon’s awful French accent and fully aware he was winning the battle over his master’s wardrobe, gave him an indulgent smile. “Just so, my lord.”
Dressed at last to his valet’s satisfaction in the formal dress of tails, high collar, a white tie, black onyx studs and links ornamenting his shirt, he journeyed down to the drawing room.
He had hoped to pull Delia aside and offer his mea culpa straightaway, but he was given no opportunity. The ladies had joined him for less than a minute before Filbert came in to announce dinner, and Simon was obliged to wait.
Delia was seated beside him at dinner, which he initially thought was a blessing, for it kept her stunning face and low-cut evening gown out of his direct line of vision unless he turned his head. But he soon found that fact wasn’t enough to keep desire for her at bay, because even if he kept his eyes fixed firmly on his plate or on his sister across the table, the faint traces of Delia’s perfume drifted under his nose, and the delicate scent was enough to trigger every sensual memory and erotic dream of her that he’d ever had.
Dinner was a tantalizing torment, but afterward, much to his surprise and relief, Cassie suggested that she and Delia go through so that he could enjoy his port. Though he usually found the idea of sipping port alone in his enormous drawing room both unappealing and downright silly, particularly since he wasn’t wont to drink much anyway, he was glad of it tonight, and by the time he rejoined the ladies in the drawing room, his baser desires were firmly relegated to the back of his mind, and he felt quite capable of offering Delia his apology without yanking her into his arms and kissing her senseless.
When he entered the drawing room, she was sitting with Cassandra on the sofa, and the two of them had their heads together, bent over a sheet of paper in Cassie’s lap.
“Lady Bassington has no sense of time at all,” Delia was saying as he came in. “She’ll be a quarter of an hour late, at least.”
“Isn’t that considered rude?” Cassie asked.
“Well, she’s quite elderly, you know, and one must make allowances. Because of that, I should advise against soufflés for the first course. And Lord Nasby can’t abide goose liver—it’s terribly hard on his gout. So pâté might not be a wise alternative.”
“Going over tomorrow night’s menu, I take it?” Simon said, settling into a chair opposite.
“We are,” Cassie replied. “And, oh, Simon, I can’t tell you what a help it is to have Lady Stratham here to advise me.”
