Mr. King transferred his gaze from Joshua to Lady Freyja. So, Joshua estimated, did everyone else in the Pump Room.
'Could this be the explanation of what you witnessed, my lady?' he asked.
To do her credit, she did not crumble or look as if she were searching the Pump Room floor for a deep hole to crawl into. Neither did she bluster or make a further idiot of herself by trying to insist upon the truth of her story. Her eyes narrowed and she continued to stare haughtily at Joshua.
'Why did you not explain all this to me yesterday?' she asked imperiously.
'Now let me see.' He lifted one hand and stroked his chin with his thumb and forefinger. 'I asked if I might be permitted to explain, and you replied to the effect that you knew perfectly well what you had seen and what you had heard. You added, I believe, that you were not stupid. It would have been quite ungallant of me to contradict you.'
There was a titter from some members of their audience.
Her eyes grew steely again. 'This was deliberate,' she said. 'You led me into this quite deliberately.'
'I beg your pardon for contradicting a lady.' He made her an elegant half-bow. 'But I believe it was you who approached me this morning.'
'It would appear,' the master of ceremonies said, raising his voice slightly, looking about him with genial affability, and speaking with firm finality, 'that this altercation has been over a slight misunderstanding. We must have you shake hands, my lord, my lady, so that all will see that there is no remaining rancor between the two of you.'
Joshua, with a deliberately courtly gesture extended his right hand, palm up. He smiled. He was enjoying himself enormously. He was very glad she had not collapsed into an ignominious heap of feminine mortification-that would have lessened his pleasure in besting her. Her nostrils flared again, her chin came up and with it that splendid aristocratic nose, and like a queen conferring a favor on some poor inferior mortal, she set her hand on his.
He closed his own about it and raised it to his lips.
Again there was a smattering of applause, and then everyone got back to the serious business of strolling and gossiping or-for the intrepid few-drinking the waters.
'I will get you for this,' she murmured.
'The pleasure will be all mine, I do assure you, my lady,' he murmured in return-and smiled at her with the full force of his considerable charm.
Lady Holt-Barron was so severely discomposed by the scene in the Pump Room that she was quite unable to go shopping after breakfast. Indeed, even her breakfast had to be reduced to dry toast and weak tea, the only items she thought herself capable of digesting. She retired to her room afterward to lie quietly upon her bed.
'Oh, dear,' Freyja said to Charlotte when they were alone in the morning room, 'I forget that there are ladies with such inconveniences as delicate constitutions. Ought I to apologize to your mama, do you suppose?'
But Charlotte had turned purple in the face and was attempting to stuff her linen handkerchief into her mouth. Nothing, though, would stifle the laughter that came bubbling out of her.
'Oh,' she wailed, 'if Mama hears me she will have a major fit of the vapors and we will end up having to send for the physician.'
She stifled further whoops as best she could.
'It might all have seemed like the farce at the end of the drama to you,' Freyja complained. 'I could cheerfully have died.'
'If you could just have seen yourself,' Charlotte said. 'Stalking across the Pump Room like an avenging angel while all the dowagers gaped after you. And then speaking to the marquess just as the headmistress at my school used to talk to us when we were in major trouble. And jabbing at his chest with your finger.'
But the memories were too much for her composure. She spread her handkerchief over her face and rocked with merriment.
'He knew that I would do it,' Freyja said, thinking with indignation of the grinning marquess, whose immaculate good looks had only fueled her wrath. 'That was why he did not insist upon telling me the truth in the park.'
'And if you could have seen Mama trying to make herself invisible,' Charlotte continued, 'and that horrid Mrs. Lumbard swelling to twice her size and Miss Lumbard's eyes fit to fall out of her head and-oh, everyone.' She went off into whoops again.
'At least,' Freyja said, 'I have given everyone enough to talk about and write home about for a month or more. The letters will all be book-length, I daresay.'
'Oh, don't!' Charlotte rocked back in her chair.
'The Pump Room is going to seem deadly dull forever after,' Freyja said, 'even to those who have never realized that it always is. They will all be looking to me for an encore. I will be famous.'
Charlotte giggled.
'Actually,' Freyja admitted, 'I would have loved nothing better, Charlotte, than to have punched the Marquess of Hallmere in the nose again for leading me into that trap. But I really thought I had better not. Perhaps he will offer me some provocation to do it tomorrow.'
She looked at her friend with a frown for a few moments before her lips twitched at the corners and she first chuckled and then laughed aloud.
He was a worthy foe. She must admit that much about him.
Lady Holt-Barron left her room sometime after noon, looking pale and martyred, though she smiled cheerfully and assured her daughter and Freyja that she was quite rested and had only the smallest of headaches remaining.
