He blinked. The girls assembled tittered. Amusement? Surprise? Mal didn’t care. All he cared was that Sera was moved. Moved enough to challenge him. This was familiar. And welcome. God, she was welcome as the sun in English spring.
As she drew closer, Mal’s heart began to pound, his palms itching to lift her in his arms and carry her away. Find a bed and keep her there until she agreed to begin again. Instead, he willed himself still, even as she stopped, scant inches from him, and said, loud enough for the room to hear. “Shall I tell you which foods I would happily lade with arsenic?”
He raised his brows. “You realize that if I turn up dead now, we’ve a roomful of witnesses.”
“A pity, as I realize I should have considered this course of action before. A widow receives a third of the estate, doesn’t she?”
Christ, he loved the way they sparred.
She continued. “Duck with sour cherries. Vegetables turned in the Portuguese style. New potatoes with a salted cream sauce. Lamb with jelly made from Highley’s own mint.”
Until that moment, it had never occurred to him that his favorite foods might be used against him in battle.
“Sprouts roasted with pear, fig and pig cheeks. Vinegared artichokes. Neither beef nor poultry are of particular interest. His Grace does not care for sweets, but if he must choose a dessert, it is raspberries with a drizzle of fresh cream.” She raised a brow. “Do you have anything to add, Duke?”
He’d been given a culinary set-down.
He cleared his throat. “I quite like asparagus.”
She saw the lie. He loathed asparagus. But she inclined her head and said, “How edifying. He quite likes asparagus. Do remember that, ladies.” He noted that several of the mothers were scribbling notes, as though she were giving a lesson in gross anatomy rather than meal planning. “If you’re through, Your Grace, we are in a bit of a hurry, and you are a distraction.”
She turned her back on him, and he was dismissed.
As though he weren’t master of the house and lord of the manor.
As though he were a minor, petty, irritating distraction.
Dammit. They were the distraction. He had no intention of marrying any of the girls, and so Sera was not only wasting their time with discussions of food and table settings and linen treatments and how Highley soap was made, but also wasting his time. Time he could have been spending wooing her. Which was the plan.
Though the plan appeared to be falling apart, and it had been only a week.
It was an idiot plan, obviously.
With a bow and the most gracious “Good day” he could muster to the women assembled, he returned to his study, feeling insultingly bested and not a small amount responsible for it.
Ignoring his sister-in-law’s cat, which had taken to napping on his desk, Malcolm attempted to throw himself into the estate, which he’d done halfway decently until a knock sounded on the door and his sisters-in-law entered, promising to make a bad day worse.
“There’s Brummell!” Sesily swooped over to lift the disgruntled animal from its perch and smother it with an embarrassing amount of affection. Once she was done, she returned the cat to the desk, where it proceeded to bathe itself upon a stack of farming reports.
Mal scowled at the beast, to no avail.
“Oh, you look like you’re in a sulk.” No one had ever accused Sesily Talbot of beating around the bush.
He sat back in his chair. “Not at all.”
“Mmm,” she said. “It looks like it though, doesn’t it, Sophie?”
Sophie, his nemesis, grinned and said, “I wouldn’t know, as he seems to be in a perpetual sulk around me.”
He searched for a retort, but all he could come to was, “I object to the word sulk on the grounds that it makes me sound a petulant child.” Sophie gave him a look that easily imparted her belief that he was, in fact, a petulant child. He scowled. “I’m not sulking.”
She spread her hands wide, brandishing a square of ecru. “Far be it from me to say otherwise.”
The scowl deepened. He waved at the paper. “What is that?”
She looked to her hand, her features instantly softening. “A letter from my husband.” She handed it to him. “For you.”
“Why?”
She feigned ignorance. “Who can say?”
Haven sighed and accepted the missive, reaching for a letter opener and tearing it open to reveal the message:
Haven— As it is, I’m less than thrilled that my wife has decided to spend the summer with you and her sisters instead of with me, but I am loath to argue with her when she is in her condition, and what she wishes, she gets.
Haven looked up to find Sophie, hands over her expanding midsection, serene smile upon her face. He returned to the note.
So, I shall settle for this, knowing that there is little love lost between you. Upset her, and you shall answer to me. I shall take pleasure in it.
And then, below, parenthetically:
(Upset your own wife and answer to her sisters, who are—en masse—as fearsome as I could ever be.) Eversley
“He makes an excellent point.”
Malcolm looked up from the note to find Sesily at his elbow, reading over his shoulder. He snatched the paper back. “You’re rather rude.”
She smirked. “Oh, and you’ve always been the portrait of good manners?” She turned back to Sophie. “King loves you madly.”
The Marchioness of Eversley lifted a shoulder as if to say, I know that bit.
Sesily rolled her eyes and turned back to Malcolm. “We were sent to tell you that dinner is at eight.”
He looked to his watch. There was enough time for him to shave and dress. He nodded. “Thank you.” He moved to come out from behind the desk, aware, if unsettlingly so, that he was all too eager to leave these women. It wasn’t that they scared him. Of course not.
They were women, for God’s sake. He’d barely reached the corner of the great oak desk when Sophie shook her head. “You aren’t to leave yet, though.”
“First, we’ve something to say,” Sesily added.
He took it back. They were terrifying.
“It’s clear you’ve some idiotic plan afoot here.”
Mal shook his head. “I don’t know what you—”
Sophie slashed a hand in the air. “Don’t waste our time, Haven.”
His brows shot up. “To think, everyone called you the quiet one.”
She grinned. “Well, you’ve got a pair of ruined boots that proves otherwise, do you not?”
He did, indeed. In fact, when he thought carefully on it, he could still remember the keen embarrassment he’d felt at being put on his ass by this woman. Not that he was going to tell her such a thing.
“At any rate,” she continued, “we’re all wondering what the plan is.”
He wasn’t about to say, but it seemed he did not have to.
“We’ve started a betting book.” Sesily announced as though she were discussing the weather. “Would you like to hear about it?”
He leaned against the side of the desk, feigning disinterest. “By all means.”
“Seline thinks you’re after Father’s money again.”
“I wasn’t after it the first time.”