'And that is what this is all about?' he asked her. 'This grand dinner?'
'Not at all,' she said. 'This dinner is to restore the proprieties in the eyes of all doubters. It really was a ghastly scene though I must admit to having enjoyed a private chuckle or two since over the memory of it.'
'She throws a mean punch,' he said, 'as I have twice learned to my cost. Yet you think she would be a suitable bride?'
'Twice?' She looked sharply at him.
'We need not make mention of the other occasion,' he said sheepishly. 'I am sorry to disappoint you, Grandmama, but I have too great a regard for my health to launch into a courtship of Lady Freyja Bedwyn. Or of any other lady, for that matter. I am not ready for marriage.'
'I wonder why it is,' she said, getting to her feet again, 'that every man when he says those words appears to believe them quite fervently. And why does every man appear to believe that he is the first to speak them? I must go down to the kitchen and see that all is proceeding well for tonight's dinner.'
And why was it, Joshua thought somewhat ruefully, that all women believed that once a man had succeeded to a title and fortune he must also have acquired a burning desire to share them with a mate?
Lady Freyja Bedwyn!
He chuckled aloud and remembered her as she had looked yesterday afternoon in Lady Holt-Barron's sitting room-on her haughtiest dignity and bristling with barely suppressed resentment and hostility. And unable to resist at least one barbed gibe by implying that she knew very well he had been about to kiss that serving girl.
He wondered if she would appreciate the joke of his grandmother's preposterous suggestion. He really must share it with her, he thought, chuckling again-and keep a wary eye on her fists as he did so.
There was no one at Lady Potford's dinner that Freyja did not know. She felt perfectly at ease in the company. It took her a while, though, to realize that most of the other guests were far from at ease in hers. They must be wondering, she thought, whether she was about to make another spectacularly embarrassing spectacle of herself tonight.
How foolish people were. Did they not understand that gentility had been bred into her very bones? She conversed with her neighbors at the dining table with practiced ease and studiously ignored the Marquess of Hallmere, who was seated at the foot of the table looking handsome enough in his dove-gray-and-white evening clothes to seriously annoy a Greek god or two. He ignored her too if one discounted the single occasion when their eyes met along the table. She was sure it was not a trick of the flickering candlelight that made it appear as if he blinked slowly-with one eye.
Well, every day brought something new, she thought, renewing her efforts to be sociable to the very deaf Sir Rowland Withers to her right. She had never been winked at before, unless it was by one of her brothers.
But she and the marquess ignoring each other was not, of course, the purpose of the evening. As soon as the gentlemen had joined the ladies in the drawing room after dinner, entertainment was called for and Miss Fairfax obligingly seated herself at the pianoforte and played a couple of Bach fugues with admirable flair and dexterity.
'Lady Freyja?' Lady Potford asked when she had finished. 'Will you favor us with a piece or a song?'
Oh, dear-her close acquaintances had learned long ago that Lady Freyja Bedwyn was not like other young ladies, willing and able to trot out their accomplishments at every social gathering. She decided upon candor, as she usually did-it was easier than simpering.
'After I had had a few lessons at the pianoforte as a young girl,' she explained to the gathered assembly, 'my music teacher asked me to raise my hands and declared himself amazed that I was not in possession of ten thumbs. Fortunately for me, two of my brothers were within earshot and reported the remark with great glee to our father-intending the joke, of course, to be at my expense. The music teacher was dismissed and never replaced.'
There was general laughter, though Lady Holt-Barron looked distinctly uncomfortable.
'A song, then?' Lady Potford asked.
'Not alone, ma'am,' Freyja said firmly. 'I have the sort of voice that needs to be buried in the middle of a very large choir-if it is to be aired at all.'
'I sing a little, Lady Freyja,' the marquess said. 'Perhaps we can join our voices in a duet. There is a pile of music on top of the pianoforte. Shall we see what we can find while someone else entertains the guests?'
'Oh, splendid,' Lady Potford said, and there were a few other murmurings of polite interest.
She should, Freyja realized belatedly, have made mention of rusty saws in connection with her singing voice, but she never liked to be quite untruthful. Hallmere was, as she expected, looking at her with polite interest-and a gleam of amusement in his eyes. And everyone else was observing with keen interest this first exchange between yesterday's antagonists.
She got to her feet and approached the pianoforte, near which he was standing.
'Miss Holt-Barron?' Lady Potford was asking politely, and Charlotte without a murmur of protest approached the instrument and began a flawless performance of some Mozart sonata.
The marquess picked up the whole pile of music and carried it to a wide, velvet-padded window seat. He sat on one side of it and Freyja on the other.
'Might I be permitted to observe, Lady Freyja,' he said, 'that you look particularly fetching in that shade of sea green? It matches your eyes. And might I apologize for not believing your claim to be the sister of a duke? No duke's sister of my acquaintance, you see, sleeps in unlocked inn rooms without any accompanying maid, or walks in a public park without a chaperone. Or punches men in the nose when they displease her.'
'You would deny, I suppose,' she said, picking up a sheet of music that announced itself as a song for two voices. But she saw at the very first glance that the singer of the top part had to soar to a high G and slipped the music to the bottom of the pile. 'You would deny, I suppose, that you were about to steal a kiss from that poor girl?'
'Oh, absolutely,' he agreed.
