“What? You had!”
Henry bit back a smile at their fond bickering, his eyes sliding to Josephine again in time to see her watching the scene fondly.
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean you need to be so blunt about it, dear,” Lady St Vincent sighed.
“I did tell you before,” Henry murmured, extending his arm so they could pass him out of the dining room and intothe hallway, “I do appreciate that very same bluntness, Lady St Vincent.”
Lord St Vincent beamed as he tucked his wife’s hand into his elbow, causing his wife to sigh all the more dramatically. “You’re incorrigible,” she muttered.
Josephine stepped easily into his side, surprising Henry as she mirrored her parents’ position, her hand sliding over his elbow. “Don’t worry, she’ll blame him for the entirety of it,” she faux-whispered.
“Ah.” Henry’s exhale was a half-silent laugh. “I am greatly reassured, thank you.”
“Of course. Sometimes I think this is how they keep themselves from becoming bored,” she confided, falling into step with him as they crossed from the dining room to the sitting room behind her parents.
“I think there could be worse ways.”
And Henry could name quite a few of them that were far more distasteful and common in the ton as well, though he was glad he didn’t have to.
He paused at entering the sitting room, crossing to the drink cart and procuring the glasses he’d had readily set up for after dinner to begin pouring. Lord and Lady St Vincentfollowed, lingering as he handed them their respective glasses with a nod of thanks.
“Oh, I do say, this is aged well.” Lord St Vincent whistled appreciatively as he took his glass.
“Darling.”
“Ah, right, yes.” Lord St Vincent’s moustache bristled as he looked quickly around the room. “We’ll just sit on the other side of the room there, overlooking the grounds if you don’t mind. You can pretend we aren’t even here.”
“Darling!”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he huffed, already leading his wife away towards the couch he had indicated. “Really, you can’t expect me to think about everything I utter before it leaves my lips!”
Henry bit back a laugh as he watched them wander off, his gaze slowly sliding back to his intended as he handed her the glass of red wine he’d poured for her before leading her over to the loveseat in front of the fire.
Her father wasn’t too terribly off base in assuming it would be easy to pretend they weren’t there. With the way that the room was set up, the St Vincents would have their backs tothem, and he or Josephine would have to turn to look to see them. It was about as private as society would allow.
“I’m beginning to think that ‘darling’ is an entire language in your mother’s vocabulary,” he teased as he sat down on the loveseat, waiting for her to join him.
Josephine chuckled. “It is rather, isn’t it? Depending on her tone, it can mean a great many things.”
“Like your eyes.”
Josephine looked up, surprised, her eyebrows lifting slightly.
“You always seem to be looking for something,” Henry explained, taking a sip of port as he leaned back into the arm of the loveseat. “Assessing, rather. Most of the time, it seems to be trying to figure me out. Tonight, however, it seemed as if you were searching for an opening for something.”
Unless he was terribly off his mark, which he wasn’t confident he wasn’t.
Josephine’s gaze dropped, her fingers spinning the glass of wine by its stem between her hands as she inhaled sharply. “Sometimes, I think your eyes see too much.”
Henry didn’t know whether to take that as a compliment or a complaint.
“Is something bothering you? Is there something about our upcoming nuptials that needs to be discussed?”
Josephine’s oceanic gaze snapped back to his, her blush receding as quickly as it had appeared. “Oh, no, nothing of the sort. I was just trying to find a way to best bring up my running into someone in the village yesterday.”
The village?
It was Henry’s turn to raise his brows, unable to think of anyone she might have run into that might have elicited such a wary response as to warrant her trying to find the right time to bring it up.
