“Cream and jam?” Julianna said in a bright voice.
Lord Warrington tilted his head to one side, frowning. “Pardon?”
“For your scone,” Julianna replied.
“Then, I am to stay?” Lord Warrington asked.
“Of course you are,” Isolde said, flashing another warning look at Edmund.
Julianna continued to smile as if someone had winched her mouth into that tight, unnatural position. “If it is my daughter’s wish, I do not see why not.”
“And is that your wish, Lady Isolde?” Lord Warrington asked with hope in his voice.
Isolde schooled her expression back to ladylike shyness, fluttering her eyelashes at the most promising suitor of the morning. “It is?—”
“Not the wish of the household,” Edmund interrupted, igniting a sudden burst of fury in Isolde that threatened to crack herentire façade of politeness into smithereens. “I have been placed in charge of Lady Isolde in her brother’s absence. In truth, Lord Warrington, he would not like you.”
Lord Warrington blinked at that, rising suddenly to his feet. “Now listen here, Your Grace, I have known Vincent for a year or two and he has never expressed any such opinion of me. I rather get the feeling that you are jealous, Your Grace. Has she rejected your suit? Is that the trouble here?”
At that, Edmund laughed. A wild, raucous laugh that hardly had a drop of true amusement in it. A cold thing, mocking and deeply unkind, prompting Isolde’s face to heat with a strange combination of abject rage and writhing embarrassment. Sheshouldhave laughed back at the insinuation that anything but enmity could exist between her and Edmund, but she only managed a dry chuckle.
“Outlandish notion,” Edmund said, his laughter ending sharply. “And for that accusation, I really must insist on you leaving at once.”
To Isolde’s surprise, it was her mother who got up. “Come, Lord Warrington. I think, perhaps, we should arrange for you to return another day. You will, will you not?”
Lord Warrington allowed himself to be escorted out by Isolde’s mother, muttering as he went, “I would be happy to return when Vincent comes back, but I shall not set foot in this house again if His Grace is present.”
“Of course, Lord Warrington,” Julianna said in a soothing voice, closing the drawing room door behind her, but not before casting a look at Isolde that said:Whatever this quarrel is, fix it at once.As if it was somehow Isolde’s fault that Edmund was behaving as he always did—like a rude boy that had never grown up.
CHAPTER FIVE
“My brother asked you to watch over the household,” Isolde snapped, jumping up from the settee. “He didnotask you to decimate my hopes of finding a husband. What is the matter with you? Have you yet to rid yourself of your brandy sickness? If you feel unwell, please do us all a favor and leave. Stay gone. I do not want you here.”
She marched around to the back of the settee where she began to pace, not trusting herself to be too close to the cakes and scones in case she gave into her wilder impulses and hurled the entire tray of them at Edmund. Nothing would have pleased her more, in that moment, than to see him covered in cream and jam, having to wipe it from his eyes to resume his usual glaring at her.
“A brandy-induced sickness is far better than the sickness that plaguesyou,” Edmund retorted coolly, perching on the window seat to sip from his cup of tea. After all that mocking laughter, he likely had a dry throat.
“And what sickness is that?” Isolde whirled around, scowling at him. “Is it this Duke-shaped splinter in my side that continues to fester despite my best attempts to be rid of it?”
He turned up his nose. “What a foul description. You ought to revisit your education on how to be civil.” He pushed away from the window seat, moving toward her. “The sickness I am talking about is your foolish love sickness. It has addled your brain.”
“Love sickness?” she scoffed. “Whatever are you talking about? And if you mention a single word about fairytales or romantic novels, I shall pluck my favorite from this shelf right here and lob it at your head.”
She rested her hand threateningly on the small array of books that lined the shelf nearest to her. Her London collection, for when she was not at her family’s country seat, to keep her occupied in the quieter moments of city life.
Edmund paused at the opposite end of the wide avenue between the settee and the bookshelves, his blue eyes narrowing as if he were trying to memorize the entirety ofParadise Lost.
“You do not see it, do you?” he said with a slight shake of his head.
“See what?”
“That these gentlemen with their sweet words and compliments and charm do not care a jot about you,” he replied. “Either theyare atrociously boring and have been forced into this by their mothers, so not worth your efforts, or they are fortune hunters that have spotted easy prey. That is all I have seen this morning—the dullards and the opportunists. And you are so desperate for a love match that you cannot see right through their façades.”
Isolde’s forefingers hooked over the top of the spine of the thickest book on the shelf, as Edmund came ever closer. An intimidation tactic, no doubt.
“I am not desperate for a love match,” she gasped, her neck complaining as it arched back to look up at him.
“You are,” he said, stopping just a pace away. “It is not entirely your fault—your mother has put notions into your head since you were young. But youmustgrow up and grow out of such ideas, or you will end up fillingyourdaughter’s heads with foolish notions that will not serve them well either.”
