Miss Godwin stepped forward.“Allow me to present my good friend Miss Harper.Olive, this is Christopher Pringle.”
“How do you do?”Christopher said automatically, but his ears still rang with Miss Godwin’s words.
My good friend.
For some reason, it had not occurred to him that her role as matchmaker required her to introduce eligible gentlemen to other women.Women that were her friends.Women that were no superior to her, just different.
He wondered how often her clients’ eyes turned from prospective brides to the matchmaker herself.
“I recognize the chariot, naturally.”Miss Harper stepped around them.“What lovely grays!You cannot have rented them in a posting-house.”
“I didn’t,” he agreed with a smile.“These poor beasts live in London all year, and I thought they deserved a holiday.”
“Of course they do,” she said with a nod.“I’ll buy them from you for five hundred pounds apiece.”
“What?”He took a step back.
“She’s bamming you.”Miss Godwin rolled her eyes toward Miss Harper.“Olive, tell him you’re teasing.”
“I’m teasing if you want me to be teasing.”Miss Harper flashed a dimple and slid a glance over his shoulder.“May I?”
He gestured toward the grays.“Be my guest.”
In no time, his horses were nibbling bits of carrot from Miss Harper’s hands.
“Does she carry a pocketful of vegetables everywhere she goes?”he whispered to Miss Godwin.
“Sometimes she carries orangutans,” Miss Godwin whispered back.
A startled laugh choked from his throat.
“I don’t know why I asked you,” he said.“You invent your answers.”
“Doesn’t it make a better story?”she replied unrepentantly.“Imagine her pulling a monkey from her reticule and handing it to your horses.”
He shook his head.“Orangutans aren’t monkeys.”
“There you go again,” she sighed.“Ruining perfectly good imagination with unnecessary facts.”
He grinned at her.
When Miss Harper finished exclaiming over his handsome horses, Miss Godwin stepped back a discreet distance to allow them a semblance of privacy.
Over the next quarter hour, Miss Harper engaged him in delightful banter about the downsides of having a brother, the joy of finding one’s passion, her dream to one day ride camels in Morocco just to see if she could.
He could practically feel Miss Godwin thinkingI told you soas their conversation ticked every requirement he had demanded.
But he was finding it difficult to concentrate on Miss Harper, no matter how perfect she seemed in theory.Or perhaps because she fit too neatly.There were no questions, no mystery, no surprises.She was exactly what he was looking for.
He just didn’t seem to want it.
Miss Harper glanced over her shoulder to gauge the sun.“It’s getting late.Would you like to come inside for tea?I’m as peckish as my horses.”
Miss Godwin nodded and opened her mouth.
“No, thank you,” he said before she could interrupt with ayes.“I don’t wish to outstay our welcome.It was lovely to meet you.”
“It was lovely to meet your horses,” Miss Harper replied with a cheeky grin, before turning and striding back toward her home.
