“I see,” she said, regarding him thoughtfully. “But I don’t think that was what you were going to say.”
“No, but it wouldn’t be fit for a lady’s ears,” he assured her. “Tell me, is there somewhere we could meet after we take these things down to the kitchen? I can teach you how to make very short work of any future Mr. Pottses.”
Daphne considered the question. “Papa’s study is seldom used,” she said at last. “But you need not go down to the kitchen with me. If you will set those glasses down, I shall come back up and fetch them in a trice.”
“Never!” he declared. “What if some lecherous fellow should be lurking on the stairs waiting to accost you, and you not yet trained in the art of self-defense? I should never forgive myself.”
She giggled a little at that, and allowed herself, against her better judgment, to be persuaded. It really would not do to continue to hope for what could never be, to say nothing of the unfairness to Mr. Tisdale in encouraging him to think she was free to return any very obliging sentiments he might feel for her. And yet, if Mama were right, and she must expect gentlemen to treat her as a lightskirt, surely it would only be wise to learn the most effective way of acquainting them with their error. She preceded Theo through the green baize door and down the stairs to the kitchen. Cook, busy filling the large basin with water for washing the dishes, looked up at their entrance, but although she regarded Theo curiously, she offered no comment.
With the two of them working together, the table was cleared very quickly, and it seemed no time at all before they entered the small room that had been her father’s study, and Theo closed the door behind them. Given the events of early evening, she should have felt extremely uncomfortable being alone with a man. But she did not—at least, not any longer—and her very lack of any such qualms was enough to make her uncomfortable.
“Now,” Theo pronounced, “for your first lesson—” For one mad moment, Daphne thought he was about to kiss her himself. She felt extremely foolish, and strangely disappointed, when he only said, “You should never have threatened to box his ears. All you did was put up his guard.”
“He’d guarded himself pretty well already,” she recounted bitterly. “I couldn’t have boxed his ears in any case, for he’d pinned my arms to my sides.”
“My dear girl, why do you think he’d pinned them there?”
“Do you mean,” she asked in growing indignation, “that he immobilized me on purpose?”
“From his perspective, he’d have been a fool not to,” Theo pointed out. “After all, you’d given him no reason to expect that you would welcome his attentions. Surely he must have known to expect some measure of resistance.”
“Well! I confess, I had been feeling a bit guilty about Mr. Potts, and the way his departure must grieve Mama, but I shan’t feel guilty any longer! But tell me, what should I have done? I couldn’t box his ears, but I couldn’t slap his face, either. What can one do, without the use of one’s hands—stamp his foot, perhaps?”
“Only if you wanted to give him a good laugh,” Theo said with brutal candor. “If he was wearing boots, it’s unlikely he would have felt it much.”
“What should I have done, then?” Daphne asked eagerly.
Theo hesitated, conscious for the first time of the degree of delicacy required in explaining to a gently reared young lady the intricacies of kneeing a man in the groin. “There’s a particular area of, er, a man’s anatomy that is particularly susceptible to—let us say, attack.”
“And I should hit him there?” Daphne balled one fist in anticipation. “But where is it?”
“Not with your hands,” Theo objected, suppressing a shudder. “They’re pinned to your sides, remember?”
“Then what?” she demanded impatiently.
“You need to lift your knee very suddenly—your skirts are not so straight as to hamper such a movement, are they?—and catch him in the, er, between his legs.”
Daphne, who had been anticipating some far more dramatic display of pugilistic skill, found these instructions rather disappointing. “That’s it? That’s all?”
“It will be enough, I assure you.”
She regarded him doubtfully. “And that will make him release me?”
“It will make him drop to his knees and wish he’d never been born,” was Theo’s emphatic reply. “But you mustn’t dither, and for God’s sake, don’t warn him of what you’re about to do! Just jerk your knee up, and make sure the movement is quick and hard—er, forceful,” amended Theo, wondering why he had ever thought this was a good idea. “Now, we’d better get out of here before your mother begins to wonder at your absence and comes looking for you.”
“But—but hadn’t I better practice first?”
“Good God, no!” exclaimed Theo, taking a hasty step backwards, just in case she should feel compelled to put this new skill to the test. In a gentler voice, he added, “I daresay your mother is wrong, and you’ll never have to actually use it. Few men have reason to come here at all, and even if they did—well, anyone can look at you and tell you’re a lady, in spite of your reduced circumstances.”
She gave him a little smile. “Thank you, Mr. Tisdale.”
“You’re welcome, Miss Drinkard.”
She made no further attempt to detain him, and waited fully ten minutes before following him from the study, lest her mother see and deduce that they had been closeted together. She was obliged to pour tea in the drawing room that night, and no one seeing her perform this task for the other residents would have believed her to have noticed, much less felt any disappointment, that Theo had chosen to seek his bed before the tea tray was sent up. And yet she lay awake in her bed long into the night, hearing again in her mind
