How to Tame a Wild Rogue: The Palace of Rogues

“I’m sorry I’m so late to bed,” Delilah whispered to her husband as she climbed in next to him. “Delacorte finally came home, but he brought Lord St. John Vaughn back with him, because St. John couldn’t get a hack back to St. James Square in this weather. Apparently, St. John went with him to sing songs in pubs. If you can believe that! We had to put him in a suite.”

Angelique and Delilah had been none too pleased about this. But they could hardly throw out the young heir to an earl. Delacorte had done the right thing. And they knew St. John’s parents, the Earl and Countess of Vaughn, would pay for their son’s lodging. They were good people.

“Do you remember the time Gordon brought in a live mouse and put it in his food dish, and the poor thing ran around the room and tried to climb the walls and the furniture?” Angelique said. “I think that’s what St. John will be like after a few days trapped inside due to the weather.”

St. John was young and very handsome, and reveling in this was his favorite pastime. He enjoyed making young women blush and basking in their attention, gambling modestly in gaming hells and buying fine horses. He quickly grew bored when deprived of any of these activities. He was rather indolent, but not fundamentally a bad sort in any other way. His family was lovely and rich and it wasn’t his fault his father was an earl, not really.

Learning chess had been an act of desperation born of boredom during his first visit, and this was how St. John and Delacorte had forged an unlikely bond—Delacorte had taught him. Their former guest Mr. Hugh Cassidy had fallen in love with St. John’s sister Lillias and whisked her off to America. He missed his sister, and would not outright admit it. Delacorte missed his bosom friend Mr. Cassidy, and said so all the time. He missed everyone when they left. This, too, rather bonded them, though Mr. Delacorte had found Lillias unnerving.

“Tristan?” Delilah whispered, tentatively. “Do you want to talk about our earlier conversation?”

He remained silent.

He was either sleeping . . . or pretending to sleep. His head was turned away from her. Usually, by morning, she’d find his face close to hers, on her pillow. Usually, instinctively, they turned to each other the moment they climbed into bed, even if they were half-asleep.

She felt a chill unrelated to the lowering fire, and turned down her lamp.

By habit Lorcan usually rose as the sun was just a narrow gleam at the horizon. The mouse-quiet maids had clearly already been in, judging by the scent of freshly brewed coffee wafting into his room from the sitting room.

He got his trousers and boots and shirt on and emerged from his room cravatless and coatless and yawning to a surprise.

Lady Worth was sitting at a little table near the window.

She’d opened the curtains to reveal sheets of falling rain.

Her dress was a shade of deep yellow, beautifully fitted, bands of dark brown braid trimming the long sleeves and wrapped below a lovely swell of bosom. Last night’s fuzzy hair had been tamed and prettily coiled up and pinned on top of her head in that clever way women seem to be born knowing how to do. It was a rather decent color. Warm gold, like a weathered doubloon. A few strands had made a break for freedom and spiraled lazily at her temples.

She looked pristine in the gray morning light.

The toes of brown slippers peeped out from beneath the hem, and one of them was tapping idly, as if she was listening to a waltz in her head.

One would never have guessed he’d found her last night in an alley.

She seemed to be reading a letter.

He rested his eyes on her the way he might any quietly lovely thing.

From somewhere beneath the armored plate of his soul, an ancient memory twinged: the shock of the first time he’d seen a fine lady stepping out of a beautiful carriage. He’d been a small boy. He hadn’t fully comprehended how very, very lowly his place was in the world until then.

In that instant, he’d decided to become anything but lowly.

He watched her toes and thought: he’d never learned how to waltz.

“Good morning, Lady Worth.”

Her head shot up. She offered a tentative smile. “Good morning, Mr. St. Leger. I trust you slept . . .”

Her eyes flickered. Dropped to his torso.

Then she jerked her head toward the window, and before his eyes, hot color flooded her cheeks.

Bewildered, he dropped his eyes swiftly to ascertain his cock wasn’t peeking out of his trouser fall, because surely nothing short of that warranted such a reaction.

She cleared her throat. “. . . well.”

She was still showing him her profile.

And then it struck him: his rolled-up shirtsleeves exposed a brazen amount of skin from fingertip to elbow. His throat was partially on view, too.

For God’s sake.

He suddenly felt like an ape in all his bronzed and hairy bareness. He thoroughly resented it.

“They’re arms, Lady Worth,” he said on a hush. “I suggest you move closer to the settee if you feel a swoon coming on. I cannot guarantee I will get to you before you topple out of your chair.”

She courageously turned her head toward him again.

“As valuable as that advice undoubtedly is, Mr. St. Leger, I’m not a swooner by nature. Please forgive me. I was just a bit startled, as I’d forgotten I was sharing quarters with a man who isn’t a gent—”

She bit her lip. Torment and regret and apology flashed in her widened eyes.

His rank and ramping incredulity fair pulsed during the ensuing silence.

“If you think implying I’m not a gentleman will hurt my feelings, I’ve good news for you,” he said, his voice low and silky. “My heart is as hard as my thighs.” He paused, then added, “How is your hand this morning, by the way?”

A fresh swath of hot color joined the first over her cheekbones.

For a moment he thought he’d vanquished her aplomb.

“I confess I was less concerned about devastating you than I was about committing a lapse of good manners,” she said finally, coolly.

He hated to admit it, but he liked everything about this sentence, perverse man that he was. Its elegance, its humor, its bite.

“So, you’re suggesting one can’t be a gentleman while also strolling about with their sleeves rolled up to reveal their strong, sinewy forearms.” He feigned confusion.

“Not in front of women to whom they aren’t actually married.” She explained this gently and apologetically, a missionary to a Heathen.

Which might have been enraging, if it was not so hilarious.

He was peculiarly touched by her gentleness.

“Probably because their scrawny aristocratic forearms embarrass them,” he suggested.

They locked gazes for a tick or two.

“No doubt,” she humored.

He smiled at that.

And for a moment, she also seemed in danger of smiling, too. But she was clinging to tension the way she’d clung to that sheet out the window of the building she’d escaped.

He gestured to the chair opposite her, mutely asking for permission to sit. Lady Worth was just going to need to endure the primitive assault of his bare arms.

She nodded cautiously.

On the table sat two scones on two little white plates. Two cups flanked a carafe of coffee. A little bowl of sugar and the little pitcher of cream appeared untouched.

He peered and discovered that she took her coffee black. This was a little like discovering she drank whiskey neat.

He would usually take good coffee however he could get it, but he liked a pinch of sugar in his, so he spooned a bit into the bottom of his cup.

And to his surprise, she lifted the pot and poured for him.

Her wrists were delicate, her fingers slender. The deft prettiness of the gesture disarmed him, and he was not generally in favor of feeling disarmed.

“Thank you,” he said pointedly, to prove he was not an ape.

She nodded and returned to her letter. A little dent of concentration had appeared between her straight, slim, emphatic dark brows.

“By the way, if you’d rather not look at my arms, you can look me in the eyes, instead, Lady Worth.”

With a great ironic show of humoring him, she lowered her letter and tipped her head back.

Her eyes were almost golden in the morning light, and they canted a bit at the outer corners, like almonds, or perhaps teardrops. The elegant arch of her cheekbones reminded him of cathedral windows. Her mouth was wide and pale pink and soft looking, her jaw a clean, sharp angle, her nose straight and perhaps a bit long.

She wasn’t the sort of pretty everyone would agree upon, he decided. The uncontroversial, indisputable sort. The sort that their proprietresses, Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand, were.

He was reminded, for some reason, of a bust he’d once seen of Eleanor of Aquitaine, who’d been a powerful queen. Though he thought this was more about the way she held herself, and her general air of purposefulness and confidence, as though she was accustomed to never being free of either authority or burden.

Her gaze suddenly flickered uncertainly in response to something in his expression.

She dropped her eyes to her letter again. He noticed she possessed a veritable little forest of dark lashes.

“Did Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand issue a fresh batch of rules?”

“It’s a marriage proposal.” She didn’t lift her head.

“I see. Get a lot of those, do you?” he said mildly.

She didn’t reply but her flush deepened. The curve of her cheek reminded him of a china cup, smooth and gleaming.

“All those pages to say, ‘Lady Worth, will you be my bride?’ It must be because he uses a thousand words to say what he could say in about ten.”

“Then it will be a match made in heaven, clearly.” She said it dryly. But somewhat abstractedly.

She looked up again, finally.

“It’s a good offer,” she said stiffly. A trifle defensively.

Which suggested that while torrid romance wasn’t precisely underway, she meant to be kind and fair to the person who’d written to her. And as though she wanted to emphasize that, despite the fact that Lorcan essentially collected her from the street like so much flotsam, she did indeed have value to someone.

It both touched him and bothered him quite a lot, and he could not quite say why.

“Oh, well then. And what is marriage if not a business arrangement? Just like ours.”

She fixed him with a look of strained patience. “Have you ever before been wed, Mr. St. Leger, or does your courage extend only to pantomime marriages?”

“I have thus far cleverly avoided becoming leg shackled and anticipate remaining so until the grave.”

“I am all amazement to hear it,” she murmured.

While she returned to reading her letter, he ate one of the scones in two bites. It was delicious.

She glanced up from her letter, looked at his plate, and blinked.

Not a single remaining crumb betrayed a scone had ever sat upon it.

“I only looked away for a second,” she breathed. She was almost comically alarmed.

“You best eat yours now, as I’m inclined to make it disappear as well,” he said. “And it was a right good scone. The best I’ve ever eaten.”

She drew the other scone closer to her, cautiously, as if she wasn’t entirely certain he wouldn’t snatch it away like a wild dog who had gotten loose in the kitchen.

He watched in fascinated silence as she neatly dismantled it with her fingers and then delicately ate the pieces one by one.

She patted her lips with a napkin.

He felt a bit like he was crouching in shrubbery with a spyglass, studying the habits of wild birds.

“Does it have to be in pieces?” he asked.

“It tastes better that way,” she said. “And I like to see the fluffy inside of it. I can’t explain it.”

“Is it everything, or just scones?”

“Mostly fluffy things,” she clarified, after a moment.

“Hmmph.” He was still hungry. Fortunately, they’d be fed a decent breakfast, he’d been told. He’d never really gotten into the habit of eating as an entertainment ritual. He’d learned early on to quickly devour what he could beg, borrow, or steal. At least he’d acquired over the years more-than-acceptable table manners.

“Before we go down to mingle with other guests as the rules require, perhaps we ought to decide how we mean to go on. I suspect the weather and the house rules will compel us to act like Mr. and Mrs. St. Leger for at least a few days.”

“Very well,” she said resignedly. She neatly folded her letter and set it aside, then looked up at him expectantly.

“I expect you will need to accustom yourself to calling me Lorcan. If you find such an intimacy excruciating, St. Leger will do, I suppose. I suppose you should endeavor not to flinch when I call you Daphne. Because I intend to, during the spirited discourse or what have you that goes on in the sitting room.”

She took this in. “I am not very good at lying.”

“And yet you managed it so well last night.”

“I lied by not lying,” she pointed out. Somewhat weakly.

“True enough.” He was somewhat amused. “I’m genuinely curious. What do you think will happen to you if you outright lie? Will you go straight to hell? Or do you get a number of dismissals, a bit like cricket, before you’re done for?”

Faint distaste flickered over her features. “I imagine you do it whenever it suits you.”

“It all depends on what you fear more, the wrath of God or starvation, I suppose. And if a lie is what it takes to get food or shelter when one has no hope of getting it any other way, then a lie it is. Otherwise, I’m partial to the truth. But I deal honestly with people. It’s why I’ve so many friends. And more than a few enemies.”

It was an attempt to disconcert her and she knew it because she merely eyed him ironically.

“I feel as though one ought to live by a code,” she explained patiently. “Something that sort of defines your truest self. A moral true north to turn to when you’re at a loss for how to proceed. Or to let you know when . . . you might be about to take a wrong turn.”

“Mine is ‘take what you can get when you can get it.’”

“Charming.”

“But useful. I wonder if your code would hold up to a real test?”

She regarded him coldly for a long wordless moment. “You know nothing about me.”

“Fair point. Why don’t you start with not lying to me about why someone with a lofty title has taken a j-o-b.”

She appeared to silently dither. “I don’t see why that is necessary for you to know.”

“Consider it a gift to me in exchange for lying on your behalf to one of your old friends.”

It was a slightly bastardly thing to say.

And it caused her some clear discomfort. She cleared her throat. “Our family has a bit of a financial difficulty. I am doing my part to alleviate it. Surely that’s sufficient information.”

“Your family?”

“My father, the Earl of Worth. My brothers are Charles and Montague. And my mother was named Elizabeth, and as you know now, she died when I was eleven years old.”

“Does Charles feel jealous that his brother got the fancier name?”

This surprised a smile from her so brilliantly amused he went abruptly still with awe, as if he’d stumbled across a four-leaf clover.

He basked in it a moment.

“What are they like, your father and brothers?”

Her face went luminous. “Oh, my father is very clever and witty. I can hardly keep count of the number of languages he speaks anymore. A bit absentminded and sensitive you see, as most geniuses are. Our mother’s death quite crushed him. He has spent years studying and reading and writing important papers. I suppose Charles and Montague take after him, although Monty is a bit simpler and kinder and Charles is better at sport and he’s the heir and he fancies all the girls are in love with him.”

Imagine being the people who made Daphne’s face glow like the moon, is what Lorcan thought.

“Where are they all at this moment?”

“I don’t know. On the continent somewhere, gallivanting. Paris, I think. They’ve been there about half a year. My father is at home. What about your parents, Mr. St. Leger?”

She asked that rather quickly. Eager for a subject change, if Lorcan had to guess.

“Oh, I sprang fully formed into the world, like Athena from Zeus’s head.”

She eyed him warily, as if he’d just torn away a mask.

“You should see your expression,” he said softly. “The things I know, Daphne. I traveled with a Greek on a ship who told stories of gods and goddesses at night by the stars and taught me all about the dangers of the pox. All the knowledge a man ever needs.”

She fixed him with two seconds’ worth of a small, patient smile. “Thanks to Charles and Montague, I know how amusing little boys find it to attempt to be shocking.”

He liked this, too, but he was a bit disappointed he couldn’t shock her. “Very well. My father was a right bastard. I suppose you don’t need to know that, but do feel free to say so if the subject arises in company. My mother died when I was young. I suspect all of my finer qualities I got from her. His name was George and he was some mix of French and God knows what else, and my mother was Irish and her name was Siobhan. I’m named for her father. I get my sweet nature from her and I got my brutish looks from him. I am not quite certain how old I am, although I like to tell people I’m thirty-five, give or take a year.”

She’d gone visibly tense from the word “bastard” on. And then her face went fully troubled.

And this made him set his teeth. He could sound downright posh, if he put his back into it. He’d sneaked into the King’s Theater when he was a boy to cadge scraps of food from the vendors, and absorbed the lofty language of the actors prowling the stage. Later, he’d further refined his speaking through exposure to secret business dealings with earls and their ilk.

But out that word “bastard” had come, because it was the way he normally spoke and the only way he ever thought about his father, and he was unaccustomed to censoring himself. Sharing a suite with her was going to work nerves he hadn’t suspected he possessed.

“What do you remember about your mother?”

He had never been asked this. He was disconcerted, a feeling that rarely visited him as an adult.

“She had a pretty voice,” he said shortly. He hesitated for a time. Gruffly he said, “I remember she called me a thaisce. It means ‘my treasure’ in Gaelic.”

He found that he’d gone quite still. As if to hold himself apart from any feelings he might have about those words.

“How lovely,” she said gently. “My mother called me Daphne.”

He grinned at that.

“I lived with my father until he died when I was about ten and then I fended for meself,” he said.

“In St. Giles.”

“Aye.”

“When you were ten? But . . . how . . . how did you . . .”

“Oh, any way I could, luv,” he said simply. “The details will only appall you.”

He could tell she did not take to being called “luv,” which only made him want to do it again.

There ensued a long silence, during which he could almost hear the questions milling about in her head, and during which he wore an expression designed to discourage them.

“When do you celebrate your birthday?” was what she chose to ask finally.

“I do not celebrate my birthday. Haven’t a clue when it is. When do you celebrate yours?”

She paused. “I’ll be thirty years old in two days. Feel free to gasp.”

He probably ought to say something like, “and you don’t look a day over twenty,” or “I never would have guessed,” but it wasn’t true. It wasn’t so much about how she looked as how she carried herself. By the age of thirty, more people had drawn a few conclusions about life and had acquired a sort of certainty, perhaps a bit of piquant cynicism, that no twenty-year-old possessed.

So he said the unoriginal thing. “I suppose getting older is better than the alternative,” he said.

Even he knew that thirty years old was considered well on the shelf for a woman. He wondered what it was about her that kept her at home with her father and brothers.

He found himself relieved she had a marriage proposal. Women like her ought to be safely sorted into the categories to which they belonged. He’d witnessed the suffering of too many desperate tag ends of society.

“What is your favorite thing to eat?” she asked.

Into his mind flashed an outrageous and prurient, and, frankly, true, response, and if he’d said it aloud a man would have laughed. But the point would have been to confuse and horrify her, and he disliked himself for the impulse to constantly poke at her like an anemone, simply to see what she would do. Simply because she was pristine and blushed easily.

“I’m merely grateful for food well-prepared. You may have noticed that I like scones.”

Her eyes were full of questions, all of which he was prepared to bat sharply down. He did not want to see the pity, speculation, revulsion, or sympathy reflected in her eyes. He needed none of it from the likes of her. The past was the past. He was here now and he was well fed and getting hungrier by the minute.

“I am grateful if you now regularly find enough to eat.”

He gave a single, slow, forbidding nod. “What is your favorite thing to eat?”

She hesitated.

“Oranges,” she said, somewhat shyly.

She was still studying him with an uncomfortable curiosity.

“A fine choice,” he said crisply. “Has your family an orangery, Lady Worth?”

“We haven’t.”

“Why oranges? And not blancmange, or cheddar, or a turkey leg?”

She cleared her throat. “Because it’s like the sun, in the form of a fruit.” She said this almost resignedly, as if this was an embarrassing secret she’d harbored. “And that’s how it feels when you eat one, too. As if all the joy the sun takes in shining is in one slice. And I love how the peel smells when you dig your nails into it—it’s like orange, only times a thousand, with a bit of an an edge. And when you bite into it it’s taut at first and then the juice sort of explodes in your mouth and it’s . . .”

He realized he was frowning faintly and got control of his face. He was unsettled. More specifically, he was unsettled because he was a trifle aroused. He was at once tempted to hand all sorts of things to her to hear how she felt about them.

Was Lady Worth a secret sensualist? One would never have guessed. He wondered why it was something which embarrassed her.

Awkwardly, he said nothing.

“What are your interests and pursuits?” she asked politely.

“Embroidery, pianoforte, and watercolors,” he said at once.

She sighed impatiently.

“Oh, my interests and pursuits. Mine are fighting and fu—”

She looked so braced for more brutishness that he felt a fresh wave of self-dislike both for himself for wanting to ruffle her, and for her for providing the inspiration to ruffle her.

The truth was, he had never parsed his life into interests and pursuits. His interest was living and his pursuit was thriving, and all of it was all of a piece.

“I actually don’t mind a good fight, now and again. The kind with fists. I like to win, and I like to make a point about crossing me. And that point is: don’t do it. But I seldom need to, see. I like a good dark ale and the foam of it on my tongue. I like to sail. Wind in my hair, sun in my eyes, spray on my face. I like to become better and better at things, everything, I try. I love to organize and command men, because I think I’m bloody good at it. I like to invest my plunder in clever ways and it thrills me to my core when I make a sou or two or more on it. I like a smart wager and a hard negotiation and a good cigar and the sound a woman makes when I . . .”

Her expression throughout was some variation of shock, alarm, fascination, and martyred patience.

He paused. “How long will we say we’ve been married, if we’re asked?”

“We can say that it feels like forever,” she said.

His short laugh became a sigh. “One year?”

“Very well.”

An awkward pause ensued.

She cleared her throat.

“As for my interest and pursuits . . . I do like embroidery, watercolors, and pianoforte,” she said with great dignity. “And I’m good at them. Possibly as good as you are at . . .” she sighed “. . . fighting. I like to dance. And walking in the country. I love finding tiny errors in balance sheets and creating exquisite budgets.” She opened her mouth, as if she seemed about to say something else. Then changed her mind.

He frowned faintly.

Finally, she said, “And I like stars.”

And then said nothing more.

He was bemused. “What do you like about them?”

“Everything.”

He stared at her.

Wondering why she was tight-lipped about this, of all things.

She cleared her throat, and then confessed, in a low voice, as if relating a crime, “They seem like magic, to me. I mean, aren’t they? When you look up, and when you think about it, how remarkable and almost outlandish it is that twinkling things are just . . . suspended there in the sky. Imagine a night sky without them. How shocking that would be. I like the lore around them. I love how they are so far away and so beautiful that merely to see them is to yearn, because you can never reach them, and I think maybe that’s why we associate them with wishes. Particularly for things we think we cannot have. I like that they’re everywhere, so that someone a continent away might now be looking up at the same stars we look at here. I like that we’ve learned to navigate by them. That they were used to portend events. I just . . .” She waved a hand. Somewhat overcome.

He could not imagine why she was blushing. He was, in fact, somewhat peculiarly enthralled by this recitation.

“Stars are all of those things and more,” he agreed cautiously. “Stars are my friends. I’ve learned to navigate by them. Once you know them that way, you can feel at home anywhere in the world.”

Suddenly he wanted to go outside and look at stars with her words running through his head, to see what she saw and feel what she felt.

His life had been a whole pageant: adventure, violence, subterfuge, tragedy and triumph, lust and hunger. He was beginning to feel that the speed and urgency of living might have deprived him of properly savoring textures. And nuances. It made him restless. He realized he’d been assuming a certain superiority of experience a moment ago. It was disconcerting to feel that the world, in fact, might have some dimension he’d overlooked. That she might have something to teach him.

He was tempted to ask her why talking about it seemed to bring her no joy. And yet that seemed to diverge from their current mission, which was to acquire just enough information to be able to perpetuate their little ruse so they could continue enjoying the hospitality of The Grand Palace on the Thames.

And besides the stars were not going to be showing themselves over the next few nights.

She looked relieved at his answer, regardless. “Do you like to read?”

He read slowly. He wrote simply. He’d learned to do both only about a decade ago. He’d paid someone to teach him. It wasn’t yet anything he associated with recreation. Though he did quite enjoy listening to stories.

He was disinclined to admit any of this to her.

He said, “I’ve a book by the explorer Mr. Miles Redmond I’ve been trying to get through.”

“Mr. Miles Redmond isn’t for everybody,” she sympathized. “But I enjoy his work. It’s very thorough.”

Thoroughly boring, he was tempted to say, but did not. “I’ve traveled to a number of exciting places,” he volunteered. “The Orient, the south seas.”

“I’ve traveled to London, Brighton, Sussex, Dover, and points in-between.”

“All thrilling places.” Especially when one was a smuggler.

She smiled ruefully at this.

“Do you like to read?” He suddenly wanted to hear what she had to say about it.

“Oh, yes. A bit of everything, really. Do you have a favorite story?” she tried.

“Oh, I like myths. Lust, murder, kidnapping, revenge, jealousy, obsession, creatures with snakes for hair, blokes getting their livers pecked out, nymphs. The story of my life.”

She took this in with a somber expression. “Mine, too.”

He wasn’t sure whether she was taking the piss. Or if she was just indulging his efforts to rattle her. He smiled, slowly, regardless.

“Go ahead and ask the question you’ve been wanting to ask,” he said.

“The how did you get your scar question, or the what did you do that so upset Captain Hardy question?”

He went still. Impressed, and somewhat wary.

Her gaze was very steady and a bit ironic.

He pointed to his face. “He was aiming for my heart and I knocked his sword up just in time. Seconds later he was dead.” He smiled slightly. “And Captain Hardy is nothing you need to concern yourself about.”

Her gaze didn’t flicker. But she’d gone noticeably still, and eventually her expression went inscrutable, and then she turned slightly toward the window again. Away from him and his bare arms and his wild ways.

He wasn’t entirely certain why he’d said it so unnecessarily bluntly. Or why he’d felt the need to share he’d killed the man who’d marked him for life. Some instinct had urged him to swiftly draw a sharp line between what she was and what he was.

What unnerved him was that he recognized it as a defensive response akin to piercing a pirate in the gut.

She returned her gaze to him. He had the strangest sense that she’d understood why he’d done it.

“I think we will be able to lie convincingly enough about marital bliss for the duration of a breakfast,” he said finally. “Shall we go down now?”

“I think the scone will do for me for now. I believe I’ll spend the morning considering my response to my letter.” She gestured to the alleged marriage proposal, folded next to her elbow.

“Very well. I’ve business in town I must attend to before the roads flood. You won’t see me again until this evening.”

“Until the hour of spirited discourse is upon us, then.” She offered him a small, polite placate-the-rogue smile.

She was still reading her letter when he went out the door a minute or so later, his shirtsleeves rolled down beneath his coat.