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“Good evening, My Lord, My Lady,” Emily said with an extremely correct curtsey. “I am so glad you could join us this evening.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” his mother said with an icy smile. Benedict cut her a warning look. So far, she’d not offered further insult against Emily—his threats about the Dowager finding a new home had apparently hit their mark. But he could tell that she was pushing against these boundaries like a child forever trying to escape the nursery.

“My father shall be with us shortly,” Emily went on smoothly. Benedict could only assume that she was pretending not to hear the snub in his mother’s tone; Emily was too clever to have genuinely missed it. “Shall we adjoin to the sitting room in the meantime? Dinner should be just a few minutes more.”

“Wonderful,” Priscilla simpered, sounding like she found it anything but.

Emily ignored this, too, leading them towards the sitting room with a gracious gesture. Priscilla followed her as did Rose.

Amanda did not.

“Well, well, well,” she said, propping her hands on her hips.

Benedict was a confident man. For one, he was very tall. That helped, he’d found, in facing down opponents—in business, inpolitics, in life. For another, he knew himself. He was steady, certain, competent.

Standing in front of this eighteen-year-old debutante, he experienced the exact same feeling as he had as a first year at Eton, being scolded by one of the masters for his poor performance on an assignment.

He shook the feeling off. That was ridiculous, of course.

Although he probablydidowe Miss Amanda something of an apology, come to think of it.

“Miss Rutley,” he began, wincing slightly. “Please allow me to assure you, I did not intend…” He trailed off. Well, there was no good way to end that sentence, was there?

Miss Amanda Rutley remained silent, merely arching an eyebrow.

The Eton masters, Benedict decided, could learn a thing or two from Miss Rutley.

He scrambled for how to explain…everything.

“It’s merely that…” he tried again. Dash it all, but this was uncomfortable. This was why he preferred to occupy the moral high ground.

“I really am desperately curious to hear if you can finish a sentence,” Miss Amanda commented.

It was then that Benedict began to suspect that she was toying with him.

He scowled, and she burst into laughter.

“Oh, bravo,” she said, her face lighting up with a grin. “Thatisa ferocious look. You should try that on my sister. And by that, I mean that you should try that on my sister when I am there to witness it. I amdesperateto see what she would have to say.”

Despite the fact that he was being soundly mocked by a girl barely out of the schoolroom, Benedict felt himself begin to lighten. And strangely enough, this also helped him find his words.

“I am sorry for how it all happened,” he said sincerely. “I did not mean to…imply things that I was unable to deliver.”

She waved him off, still laughing. “Oh, never mind that. I feel rather thatImight have been the one leadingyouon. Unless Emily was telling tales when she said you intended to marry me?” Why did she sound hopeful about this?

Feeling once again that there was no right answer—and that if he ever found himself needing a dose of humility, he would seek out Amanda Rutley posthaste—Benedict said, “Ah, well, yes. I did. Rather.”

“Good Lord,” she muttered, apparently to herself. “But you’re soold.”

Well, that was him told, wasn’t it?

Then Miss Amanda shrugged, her appalled expression disappearing in a flash.

“Ah, well, never mind. It has all worked out in the end, hasn’t it? You’ve got Emily, who is quite a dear for all that she’s abitof a stickler for being proper. Always on about ‘Amanda, don’t bring amphibians inside,’ or ‘Amanda, you cannot perform social experiments on unsuspecting gentleman.’”

She shot Benedict a glance that said she assumed he would be sympathetic to this clearly dreadful plight. He wondered for the first time if, had he actually ended up marrying Amanda Rutley, he wouldn’t have found himself in completely over his head. After all, here she was, saying so many bizarre things that he very nearly glossed over the clearly mad observation that Emily, the little hellion, wasexcessively proper.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But did you say your sister was a stickler for propriety?”