Free No Place for a Dame by Connie Brockway Page B

satisfied with her own company. Yes. Quite satisfied.
    She would send written word tomorrow or the next day politely declining his offer and that would be that.
    “Say you will.”
    “Perhaps.”
    Neville gave a knowing nod. “Good. Now, let us go rescue my poor sister from Strand’s attention. She looks likely to disappear under the cushions at any moment.”

Chapter Nine

    G oodness. How ever did it grow so late?”
    After stretching the bonds of even the most liberal rules of etiquette by more than an hour, Lady Demsforth finally noted the time and only then, Strand was certain, because her son was holding his pocket watch open five inches beneath her nose. Vedder had left a half hour earlier.
    “If we have stayed a bit too long, Lord Strand, it is entirely your own fault for being such a congenial host,” she cooed. “Naughty man. But then, time does have a way of disappearing when the company is so pleasing. Don’t you agree, Lord Strand?” She tipped her head blatantly in the direction of her poor daughter. Lucille turned pink.
    “Indeed, yes, Lady Demsforth,” Giles replied, feeling sorry for the girl. She so clearly felt her mother’s vulgarity.
    Normally, Giles managed to dodge Lady Demsforth and her ardent and ill-fated pursuit of his coronet, but when Burke had brought her card, he’d remembered that her brother was president of the very society Avery wished to join and so had received her and her progeny.
    But why had Vedder accompanied them? Though he and Vedder both belonged to White’s Gentlemen’s Club and moved in the same circles, they could hardly be called friends. Indeed, Vedder had never called on him before. It was a unique event and Giles distrusted unique events. What did Vedder hope to gain?
    “You must promise me, promise, that you will call on us this week. We shall be home every day,” Lady Demsforth said, interrupting his speculation.
    Neville’s cheeks grew ruddy with mortification.
    “I shall try, ma’am, but I do have obligations to my protégé.”
    Lady Demsforth cast a quick glance at where Avery sat teetering on the edge of a chair like a giant egg about to topple over.
    “Yes. Well. Bring him along.” She reached out and rapped his hand sharply with her fan, smiling coquettishly. “Promise.”
    “I shall endeavor,” he said, fearful he would otherwise end up spending the next hour fending off her demands. Happily, her son took matters into his own hands—literally—by clasping hold of her upper arm and hauling her bodily to her feet while still somehow managing to make it look as if he were simply a dutiful son attending his mother. Clearly, Neville had unforeseen potential.
    “There, Mother. Off we go,” Neville said with forced cheer. “Lucy?”
    With what Giles would have considered unflattering alacrity had it not been so amusing, Lucille jumped to her feet and, with a quick bobbed curtsey, dashed out of the room, leaving her brother to drag their parent along in her wake. Giles grinned after them, turning to see if Avery shared his amusement—
    She did not.
    She’d stood up, hands on her hips, the furry brow lowered in a thundercloud of displeasure. The tip of her mud-encrusted shoe tapped ominously.
    He strangled back the smile that threatened, deciding it would be impolitic, but really, what in the Almighty’s name had she done to achieve such a shape? She looked like a giant apple. Every feminine contour had been obliterated by whatever means she’d used to achieve that figure. And she’d apparently glued something between her brows to make them meet over the bridge of her nose.
    He approved the spectacles. They reflected back much of a room’s light, hiding the extraordinary midnight color of her eyes and her long, spiky lashes. It would be better, however, if she didn’t need to keep pushing them up on her nose. It drew attention to hands both too elegant and too slender to be masculine.
    And though it had been necessary, he regretted the