His mouth hung open like a caught fish. He snapped it closed.
She leaned forward the slightest bit, hinging from the hips, her shoulders squared. “You said I was in your employ, and I am not. I do not take a commission. I am a lady. It is true my father has accepted gifts of gratitude from those I’ve helped, but…” She retreated to sit perfectly upright once more. “What I do is done from love.”
Who was this woman? Certainly not the soft-spoken vision from last night. She let him hold her hand! The woman sitting across from him now would sooner chop it off.
She lifted one hand from her lap and rolled it in circles at the wrist. “Among other things. Personality and social standing are paramount factors. As are physical attraction, financial stability, and common life goals.”
The drawer to his right seemed to burn bright. The only remaining copy of his harebrained Gentleman’s Guide to Courtship rested there, forgotten in the dark. “You have a system, then?”
“I daresay I do.”
He’d thought to construct his own from trial and error and observation. He’d been a fool. His hands wrapped like claws around the cool wood of his chair, and he inhaled deeply, relaxed his fingers. “Tell me about it.”
“Will you judge it? Do you think yourself fit to criticize what I do best? You see, I have read your articles, Your Grace. I knowthe sort of advice you offer, and I know your courtship strategies are… lacking.”
Oh God. Oh no. He clenched his hands about the ends of the chair arms to keep from melting into a humiliated puddle. “You did not think them lacking last night.” Shouldn’t have said that.
Slowly, she stood, chin high and indignant temper flashing red across her cheeks. “I see this partnership will never work. I regret it. I am in need of this. But considering last night… and considering our diametrically opposed philosophies, I think I will return to Scotland. Or see if anyone else in London is in need of my particular talents. I cannot hope, after all, that you will let me proceed as I wish. I foresee nothing but meddling and bickering and therefore failure. I refuse to fail.” She bobbed a curtsy. “I will be on my way. Thank you for this meeting. I found it… enlightening.” Her back was elegant and strong as she marched away from him.
“Sit back down. You came to help me, so you will do exactly that. We can forget what happened last night. I will not bring it up again if you do not. And I will not interfere. Sit, Lady Emma.”Now. What he wanted to add to the end of that sentence. She’d likely laugh and leave him lonely.Alone. Not lonely. He wasn’tlonely. She certainly could not make him feel that way. Hell, but his head ached.
“I regret,” he said, “that you read those pieces. I wrote them more than six years ago, and I have learned much since then.” Learned to keep his nodcock ideas to himself. Learned he didn’t understand women at all. “Sit, Lady Emma.”
The command made steel of her spine, and she continued her journey toward the door.
But as she strengthened, he melted, remembering how easy it had been to talk to her in the moonlight and shadows. “I was terrified back then. Eight sisters unwed and, as I saw it, all of them terribly unhappy. All I could think was how happy ourparents had been, and I wished… I wished to push them toward matrimony since they did not seem to wander that direction themselves.”
She considered him over her shoulder, thoughtful.
He shook his arms out to hang at the sides of his chair, dropped his head against its back edge to stare at the ceiling. He’d already made the cut in his chest, why not go deeper, slice all the way to his damn heart. “I was trying to help the gentlemen who seemed too scared or too stupid to court my sisters properly.”
More footsteps now, but closer, then the creak of a body sitting in a chair.
“Did it work?” she asked.
“Five of them married now.” He sighed, lowered his head to find her staring at him. “No help from me, I’m afraid.”
She lifted a hand over her mouth but not before he glimpsed a grin.
Charming. Infuriating? Both.
He fell forward and braced his forearms on his desk. “I know it seems foolish, but I prefer to get straight to the point. A direct attack. That is the right way to solve problems.” Identify and attack, like throwing a blade at a target. He’d hit dead center every time. Almost every time. “My Guide did just that—placing possible courtship strategies into immediate practice so that after close observation I could modify if necessary.”
She glanced at the target across the room. “Throw, and if you miss, adjust your aim?”
“Precisely.”
She pressed her lips into a line before they popped out lush and pink. “That is not the proper way to go about things at all. You cannot shoot a suitor as you would a deer in the woods. Marriage, compatibility, like most problems, are more complicated. One must gather bits and pieces of informationbefore taking action. Hold that information close and study it often until they begin to form an understandable solution.”
He did not roll his eyes. Barely.
“Do not make that sound.”
“What sound?”
She pointed a lazy finger at his neck. “The one stuck just there and halfway between a grunt and a huff. The one that says you think I’m absurd.”
Her means of solving problems was absurd. She had flaws. Excellent bit of truth to discover. He’d cling to it when silk clung to the curve of her hip.
