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Dunford stood. "You must. Every household does."
Henry followed him with her eyes as he walked around the table to pull out her chair. He was so handsome, so very handsome, and for a moment she had actually thought he wanted her. Or at least he had acted as if he had. And now...Now she didn't know what to think. She stood up and noticed he was looking at her expectantly. "I've never seen any here," she said, deciding that he was merely waiting for a reply about the port.
"Didn't Carlyle ever entertain?"
"Not very often, actually, although I fail to see what that has to do with port—or with gentlemen."
He eyed her curiously. "After a dinner party it is customary for the ladies to retire to the drawing room while the gentlemen indulge in a bit of port."
"Oh."
"Surely you were not ignorant of the custom?"
Henry flushed, painfully aware of her lack of social polish. "I did not know. How ill-bred you must have thought me this past week—lingering over supper. I'll leave you now." She took a few steps toward the door, but Dunford caught her arm.
"Henry," he said, "if I hadn't been interested in your conversation, believe me, I would have made you aware of it. I mentioned the port because I thought we might enjoy a drink together, not because I wanted to rid myself of your company."
"What do the ladies drink?"
"I beg your pardon?" He blinked, completely at a loss.
"When they retire to the drawing room," Henry explained. "What do the ladies drink?"
He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "I haven't the faintest idea. I don't think they drink anything."
"That seems horribly unfair."
He smiled to himself. She was beginning to sound more like the Henry for whom he had come to care so much. "You may disagree once you get your first taste of port."
"If it is so very dreadful, why do you drink it?"
"It isn't dreadful. It is merely an acquired taste."
"Hmmm." Henry seemed lost in thought for a moment. "I still think it is a horribly unfair practice, even if port tastes as bad as pig swill."
"Henry!" Dunford was appalled at the tone of his voice. He sounded like his mother.
She shrugged. "Excuse my language, if you will. I'm afraid I've been trained to put on my good manners only for company, and you really don't qualify as that any longer."
The conversation had swung so far into the improbable that Dunford felt tears of mirth welling up in his eyes.
"But as for the port," she continued, "it seems to me you gentlemen probably have a merry old time of it in the dining room with the ladies gone, talking about wine and women and all sorts of interesting things."
"More interesting than wine or women?" he teased.
"I can think of a hundred things more interesting than wine or women..."
He realized with surprise that he couldn't think of anything more interesting than the woman standing before him.
"Politics, for example. I try to read about it in the Times, but I am not such a lackwit that I don't realize quite a bit goes on that does not get reported in the paper."
"Henry?"
She cocked her head.
"What has any of this to do with port?"
"Oh. Well, what I was endeavoring to explain is that you gentlemen have a grand time while the ladies have to sit in a stuffy, old drawing room, conversing about embroidery."
"I have no idea what the ladies talk about when they retire," he murmured with just the barest hint of a smile. "But somehow I doubt it is embroidery."
She shot him a look that said she didn't believe him in the slightest.
He sighed and held up his hands in mock surrender. "As you can see, I am trying to rectify this injustice by inviting you to join me in a glass of port this evening." He looked around. "That is, if we can find some."
"There is nothing here in the dining room," Henry said. "Of that I am certain."
"In the drawing room then. With the other spirits.
"It's worth a try."
He let her lead the way to the drawing room, noting with satisfaction how well her new dress seemed to fit. Too well. He frowned. She really had quite a nice shape, and he didn't like the idea of someone else discovering that fact.
They reached the drawing room, and Henry crouched down to look in a cabinet. "I don't see any," she said. "Although, never having seen a bottle of port, I really haven't the faintest idea what I'm looking for."
"Why don't you let me have a peek?"
She stood and changed places with him, her breast accidentally brushing against his arm as she did so. Dunford suppressed a groan. This had to be some sort of cruel joke. Henry was the most unlikely temptress imaginable, yet here he was, hard and straining and wanting nothing more than to throw her over his shoulder again, this time to haul her up to his room.
Coughing slightly to mask his discomfort, he bent to look in the cabinet. No port. "Well, I suppose a glass of brandy will do just as well."
"I hope you're not disappointed."
He threw her a sharp look. "I am not so enamored of my spirits that I am crushed at the loss of a glass of port."
"Of course not," she said quickly. "I never meant to imply you were. Although..."
"Although what?" he snapped. This constant state of arousal was shortening his temper.
"Well," she said thoughtfully, "I should think that someone overly enamored of spirits would be just the sort who wouldn't care which type of spirit he imbibed."