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“I wouldn’t miss it,” he said as Miss Emily fumed so intently that he could practically smell the smoke. “Shall we adjourn to the parlor?”

“Marvelous,” Miss Amanda said, taking his proffered arm. “I am so looking forward to getting to know you better, My Lord.”

“And I you,” he returned. It was the prescribed conversation. Easy, obvious, proper.

Boring, a voice whispered. He ignored it.

They turned to exit the foyer but not before he caught a glimpse of Miss Emily’s sharklike smile.

“And I shall beso pleasedto accompany you,” she said.

He was entirely certain it was a threat. And he could not help but think that he enjoyed it anyway.

CHAPTER 5

Emily liked visiting, and she disliked murder. These, she felt, were not controversial opinions.

As she sat in the parlor with her sisters and the Earl of Moore, however, she found that visiting was a misery, and murder was sounding oddly appealing.

Amanda and the Earl, for their part, seemed to be having a perfectly lovely time. Amanda was doing a perfect impression of someone who hadn’t touched an amphibian in the last twenty-four hours, and the Earl was playacting as a gentleman instead of showing his true form, that of the Patron Saint of Annoying Behavior.

Rose appeared to be having a moderately fine experience. She’d stuck her head into the room moments after Amanda, Emily, and the Earl had entered, had murmured a low, “Oh dear,” and had promptly set herself up as a barrier between Emily and the conversing couple. Rose was occasionally contributingto the conversation but reserved most of her attention for the sketchbook in her lap.

Emily wastryingto follow her little sister’s example—and wasn’tthatsomething she’d never expected to do—but she was less attending to her embroidery and more stabbing frustratedly at a piece of fabric.

She was simply so furious with that awful, awful,awfulman!

And, even worse, her mind kept insistently returning to the low, shivery cadence of his voice when he’d said words likeauthorityandcommand. And how he’d looked when he’d leaned in close to her. The way she’d felt delicate and oddly protected when he’d loomed over her.

This was, quite obviously, insane. She was clearly going insane.

“…don’t you think, Emily?” Rose was asking.

Emily’s head jerked up. She prayed she wasn’t blushing as she forced a pleasant smile to her face.

“Sorry, darling, what was that? I was plotting some stitchwork.” She waved her embroidery circle aimlessly. The Earl quirked an eyebrow as if to say he knew she was lying.

He didn’t, of course. Even suspecting that was insane. And Emily didn’t have time to go insane, not when she had her sisters to mind.

Rose gave her a terse look, her turned back hiding the expression from Amanda—who looked far too gleeful for Emily’s comfort—and the Earl.

“Don’t you think it’s unlikely that the rumor about a ball where everyone must attend on horseback is true?” Rose asked sweetly.

It was a monumental struggle to keep her smile from slipping. Emilyknewthat rumor was false because Amanda was the one who kept trying to get it going. She’d read a gossip item—Emilyreallyneeded to find a better hiding place for the papers—wherein a highly intoxicated young lord had attempted to ride his horse into the middle of an assembly. Amanda had become obsessed with the potential hilarity of a ballroom full of horses. When Emily had told her point-blank that she would be dead in the ground before she allowed such a thing at Drowton House, Amanda had taken to bandying the idea about as rumor in the hopes that someone with more authority over their own ballroom would overhear the idea, decide it sounded like good fun, and make it a reality.

This was the kind of thing Emily had to deal with.

“I think,” she said, locking eyes with Amanda, who was barely managing not to giggle, “that such a thing is highly unlikely and would be, if real, extremely impractical and irresponsible, not to mention likely to result in considerable damage to person and property.”

Amanda stuck her tongue out at Emily though she managed to arrange her face back into a mask of demure politeness before the Earl turned back to face her.

“I suppose so,” she sighed. “The rumor mill is truly the oddest thing, is it not? Why, I recently read…”

Emily ceased listening as Amanda turned to a far more likely—and far more appropriate—conversation about a sailing competition that was interrupted by a flock of cantankerous geese. It was notquitegenteel talk of fashion and Society, but Emily would take what she could get.

Besides, she thought with a tiny smile, if Amanda was trying to rile her, it likely meant that her little sister was starting to forgive her for the previous night’s antics. And if she was focused on riling Emily, it meant she was not overly serious about the Earl of Moore.

And that was a good thing. Because Emily wasn’t entirely certain what to make of this tall, brooding earl, who was frustratingly difficult one minute and effortlessly charming the next, but she did know one thing.