“Feer awn-shok,” Miss Peterhouse dutifully repeated.
“Very good indeed, Miss Peterhouse! And what would ye say to the òinseach if ye were to meet her?” A moment of silence followed. “Why, ye’d say, Moi nàir’ort!” he exclaimed so loudly that Anna jumped.
Miss Peterhouse laughed. “Oh my! What does that mean, my lord?”
“It means ‘Shame on ye!’” It sounded as if he was standing just above her, so frighteningly close that Anna reared back, and the shrub rustled in her wake.
“What was that?” Miss Peterhouse asked.
“Naugh’ but fior òinseach,” he said with a laugh. “Well, then, Miss Peterhouse, it is unfair of me to keep ye from the other men who desire to dance—”
“Oh no, it’s really quite all right!” she exclaimed.
“No, no…I willna be accused of monopolizing yer charming attentions. Shall we?”
“Oh… yes, well. I suppose we must,” she said slowly, and there was a bit of rustling.
Anna didn’t move until she heard the sound of their footfalls far down the path. Then she twisted around, folded her arms petulantly across her middle. The man was an insolent, overbearing goat who thought himself entirely too clever! And she was still smarting at having been discovered when she saw Drake coming down the path, a cup of cider in one hand and Lucy in the other.
Oh, splendid!
Nine
A fter exhausting all four of the Amelias in attendance, as well as some suspected Amelias, Grif did not linger at the ball. He left Fynster in the hands of Miss Crabtree, although both had looked a little perplexed as he had strolled from their midst.
He found a hack, returned to Dalkeith House on Cavendish Street in something of a huff. Not only was he no closer to finding the correct Amelia, but he could not shake the uncomfortable notion that Miss Addison knew something about him. Damn her devil eyes!
A morose Hugh was in the drawing room before the hearth, his bare feet propped on a footstool directly in front of the flames, a near empty bottle of whiskey beside him. He glanced up as Grif strode into the room. “Ah, our dashing young dandy doth return,” he said in his best English-accented acerbic voice.
As Grif was accustomed to Hugh’s pouting, he ignored it, looked around the room. “Where’s Dudley?”
“Abed, lad. His gout is flaring again, and by the bye, have ye no’ seen the clock?” Hugh asked, gesturing lamely at the clock on the mantel.
Two o’clock in the morning—Dudley would have been abed hours ago. Grif took a chair across from Hugh. “And how was yer evening?” he asked Hugh.
Hugh laughed. “Full of dreams of a bonny Irish lass, with hair as red as blood and eyes as—”
“No, no,” Grif groaned. “I canna bear to hear another ode of lament to Keara Brody.”
Hugh made a sound of displeasure and reached for a cheroot that was languishing in a tray nearby. “What do ye expect, then? What else am I to do, locked away as I am? I’m no’ allowed to gamble, or to soothe me ruffled feathers with a bonny lass. At the very least, ye could regale me with tales of dancing ladies and fine wine and good gaming.”
If only he could, but unfortunately, Grif brought only two things away from the Valtrain ball: One, that he had reached another dead end on the Amelia trail—and the trail was looking bleaker all the time. And two, that he had never met a more exasperating person than Miss Addison. “I’ll regale ye, I will,” he snorted disgustedly, “with the tale of a bloody wench who knows what we’re about!”
Hugh took a long draw of his cheroot and casually released the smoke into small circles. “What do ye mean, then?”
“I mean, Miss Addison—”
“Yer favorite—”
“No, no’ me favorite! Her sister! Her endlessly vexing and bloody impudent older sister, the most aggravating female on the face of God’s earth!” Grif exclaimed. “First she asked after Liam—‘Would ye know me friend, Captain Lockhart?’” he mimicked in falsetto voice. “And then, at Whittington House, she asked where she might find Ardencaple—‘Where would ye describe it as being?’ And again, this very evening, after the wench connives to get me into standing up with her, she has the bloody nerve to imply that I might be less than honest and hiding something!”
“Oh aye, I can see why that would upset ye so, as ye bloody well are hiding something,” Hugh casually observed.
“Mark me, Hugh, she knows something. I’d swear it on me life! The hell of it is, I canna determine what she might know.”
Hugh took another draw of his cheroot as he considered it. “Impossible,” he said at last. “She knows nothing, for how could she? Unless she’s been to Scotland. Has she been to Scotland?”
“How in God’s name should I know if she’s been to Scotland?”
“Ye stood up with her,” Hugh patiently reminded him as he poured more whiskey into a tot. “Did ye no’ converse with her as a gentleman would?”