“He must have slipped past the front door,” Ivo said.
St. Vincent smoothed Pandora’s hair back from her face. “Are you hurt?” His gaze ran over her swiftly.
“No . . . no.” Helpless giggles kept bubbling up as her nervous tension released. She tried to smother the giddy sounds against his shoulder. “I was . . . trying so hard to be ladylike . . .”
A brief chuckle escaped him, and his hand moved over her upper back in a calming circle. “I would imagine it’s not easy to be ladylike in the midst of a dog mauling.”
“Milord,” came the voice of a concerned footman from nearby, “has the young lady been injured?”
Pandora couldn’t quite hear Lord St. Vincent’s reply over the pounding of her heart. His nearness, the protective arm around her, that gently roaming hand . . . all of it seemed to be awakening parts of her, deep inside, that had never been awake before. A strange new pleasure spread through her and lit every nerve ending like a succession of tiny birthday candles. Her gaze dropped to his shirtfront, the fine layer of handkerchief-weight linen doing little to conceal the hard curves and planes of muscle beneath. Seeing a hint of tawny curling hair where the placket of the shirt fell open, she flushed and recoiled in confusion.
Raising an exploring hand to her hair, she said vaguely, “My hat . . .” She turned to look for it, only to discover that Ajax had found the little velvet hat with its tempting cluster of feathers. Clamping it in his mouth, the dog shook it playfully.
“Ajax, come,” Lord St. Vincent said immediately, but the unruly retriever cavorted and jumped, keeping it out of reach.
Ivo approached the dog slowly. “Ajax, let me have it,” he said in a coaxing tone. “Come on, boy . . .” The dog turned and took off at a run. “I’ll fetch it,” Ivo promised, sprinting after the dog.
“Me too!” Justin followed, his short legs a blur. “But it’s going to be soggy!” came a dire warning from over his shoulder.
Shaking his head, Lord St. Vincent watched the retriever scamper across the lawn. “I owe you a new hat,” he told Pandora. “That one will return in shreds.”
“I don’t mind. Ajax is still a pup.”
“The dog is inbred,” he said flatly. “He doesn’t retrieve or obey commands, he tries to dig holes in carpets, and as far as I can tell, he’s incapable of walking in a straight line.”
Pandora grinned. “I rarely walk in a straight line,” she confessed. “I’m too distractible to keep to one direction—I keep veering this way and that, to make certain I’m not missing something. So whenever I set out for a new place, I always end up back where I started.”
Lord St. Vincent turned to face her fully, the beautiful cool blue of his eyes intent and searching. “Where do you want to go?”
The question caused Pandora to blink in surprise. She’d just been making a few silly comments, the kind no one ever paid attention to. “It doesn’t matter,” she said prosaically. “Since I walk in circles, I’ll never reach my destination.”
His gaze lingered on her face. “You could make the circles bigger.”
The remark was perceptive and playful at the same time, as if he somehow understood how her mind worked. Or perhaps he was mocking her.
As the empty carriages and wagon were drawn away, Lord St. Vincent guided Pandora toward the entrance of the house. “How was your journey?” he asked.
“You don’t have to make small talk with me,” she said. “I don’t like it, and I’m not very good at it.”
They paused in the shade of the portico, beside a sweet-scented bower of roses. Casually Lord St. Vincent leaned a shoulder against a cream-painted column. A lazy smile curved his lips as he looked down at her. “Didn’t Lady Berwick teach you?”
“She tried. But I hate trying to make conversation about weather. Who cares what the temperature is? I want to talk about things like . . . like . . .”
“Yes?” he prompted as she hesitated.
“Darwin. Women’s suffrage. Workhouses, war, why we’re alive, if you believe in séances or spirits, if music has ever made you cry, or what vegetable you hate most . . .” Pandora shrugged and glanced up at him, expecting the familiar frozen expression of a man who was about to run for his life. Instead she found herself caught by his arrested stare, while the silence seemed to wrap around them.
After a moment, Lord St. Vincent said softly, “Carrots.”
Bemused, Pandora tried to gather her wits. “That’s the vegetable you hate most? Do you mean cooked ones?”
“Any kind of carrots.”
“Out of all vegetables?” At his nod, she persisted, “What about carrot cake?”
“No.”
“But it’s cake.”
A smile flickered across his lips. “Still carrots.”
Pandora wanted to argue the superiority of carrots over some truly atrocious vegetable, such as Brussels sprouts, but their conversation was interrupted by a silky masculine voice.