The Secret Mistress

glass again.

Confound his misplaced sense of social responsibility. The fact that Eunice might applaud him for staying was no consolation.

The landlord appeared behind the counter and served Windrow with a tankard of ale before disappearing again.

Windrow turned to survey the room, and his eyes alit almost immediately upon the pink lady. But how could they not unless he was totally blind? He leaned back against the counter, resting his forearms back along it while clutching his tankard in one hand. His lips pursed in a silent whistle.

Edward was all the more annoyed at the blatantly sensual look on the man’s face because his own must have looked very much like it just a few minutes ago.

“Sweetheart,” Windrow said softly, obviously having dismissed Edward as a man of no account whatsoever—or perhaps he had not even noticed him, “may I persuade you to share my ale? Better yet, may I persuade you to share it and a meat pasty? There is only one comfortable-looking chair over by the fireplace, I see, but you may sit on my lap and share that too.”

Edward frowned at him. Could he not see that the woman was a lady? The evidence was glaring enough in the fine muslin of her dress, despite the bright shade, and in the intricacy of her coiffure of dark hair. He glanced at her, expecting to see her stiffen with horror and fright. She continued to stare out the window. She either assumed that the invitation was directed at someone else, or—was it possible?—she simply did not hear the words at all.

He should leave, Edward decided. Right now.

He spoke instead.

“I doubt you know the lady,” he said. “Calling her sweetheart, then, would be inappropriately impertinent.”

Maurice had often called him, affectionately enough most of the time, a staid old sobersides. Edward half expected to see dust emerge from his mouth along with the words. But they were spoken now, and he would not recall them if he could. Someone had to speak up for defenseless female innocence. If she was innocent, that was.

Windrow’s head swiveled slowly, and just as slowly his lazy eyes swept Edward from head to toe. His perusal aroused no discernible alarm in him.

“You were speaking to me, fellow?” he asked.

Edward in his turn looked slowly about the room.

“I must have been,” he said. “I see no one else present except the two of us and the lady, and I am not in the habit of speaking to myself.”

Slight amusement showed in the other man’s face.

“Lady,” he said. “I take it she is not with you. She is alone, then. I wish she were a lady. It might be mildly less of a yawn to frequent London ballrooms and drawing rooms. You would be wise, fellow, to address yourself to what remains of your ale and mind your own business.”

And he turned back to regard the woman’s derriere again. She had changed position. Her elbows were now on the sill, and her face was cupped in her hands. The effect of the change was to thrust her bosom into more prominence in one direction and her derriere in the other.

If she could only step back and see herself from this position, Edward thought, she would run screaming from the room and never return, even with a dozen chaperons.

“Perhaps this lady would care to sit in my lap while I call to the landlord to bring her a pasty and ale so that she may share with me,” Windrow said with insolent emphasis. “Would you, sweetheart?”

Edward sighed inwardly and moved one degree closer to an unwilling confrontation. It was too late to back off now.

“I really must insist,” he said, “that the lady be treated with the respect that any female ought to be accorded as a matter of right by anyone claiming the name of gentleman.”

He sounded pompous. Of course he sounded pompous. He always did, did he not?

Windrow’s head turned, and his amusement was quite unmistakable now.

“Are you looking for a fight, fellow?” he asked.

The lady seemed finally to have realized that she was the subject of the conversation behind her. She straightened up and turned, all wide, dark eyes in a narrow, handsome face, and all tall, shapely height.

Good God, Edward thought, the rest of her person more than lived up to the promise of her derriere. She was a rare beauty. But this was no time to allow himself to be distracted. He had been asked a question.

“I have never felt any burning desire to enforce gentility or simple civility with my fists,” he said, his tone mild and amiable. “It seems something of a contradiction in terms.”

“I believe,” Windrow said, “I have the pleasure of addressing a sniveling coward. And a stuffy windbag. All wrapped in one neat package.”

Each charge, even the last, was an insult. But Edward would be damned before he would allow himself to be goaded into adopting swashbuckling tactics just to prove to someone he despised that he was a man.

“A man who defends the honor of a lady, and who expects a gentleman to behave like one and confronts him when he does not, is a coward, then?” he asked mildly.

The woman’s eyes, he was aware, had moved from one to the other of them but were now riveted upon his face. Her hands were clasped to her bosom as though she had been struck by some tender passion. She looked remarkably unalarmed.

“I believe,” Windrow said, “the suggestion has been made that I am not a gentleman. If I had a glove about my person, I would slap it across your insolent face, fellow, and invite you to follow me out to the inn yard. But a man ought not to be allowed to get away with being a coward and a stuffy windbag, gloves or no gloves, ought he? Fellow, you are hereby challenged to fisticuffs outside.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the inn yard and smiled—very unpleasantly indeed.

Once more Edward sighed inwardly.

“And the winner proves himself a gentleman worthy of the name, does he?” he said. “Pardon me if I disagree and decline your generous offer. I will settle for an apology to the lady instead, before you take yourself off.”

He glanced at her again. She was still gazing fixedly at him.

He had, as he was fully aware, backed himself into a tight corner from which there was no way out that was not going to prove painful. He was going to end up having to fight Windrow and either give him a bloody nose and two black eyes to take to London with him, or suffer his opponent to dish out the like to himself. Or both.

It was all very tedious. Nothing but flash and fists. That was what being a gentleman was, to many of the men who claimed the name. Maurice, unfortunately, had been one of them.

“Apologize to the lady?” Windrow laughed softly and with undisguised menace.

That was when the lady decided to enter the fray—without uttering a word.

She seemed to grow three inches. She looked suddenly regal and haughty—and she shifted her gaze to Windrow. She looked him up and down unhurriedly and appeared to find what she saw utterly contemptible.

It was a masterly performance—or perhaps a mistressly one.

Her wordless comment was not without its effect, even though Windrow was half