weather with you, Captain Durant.”
Ha. That was his usual reaction to such talk, was it not? Conversations about the weather put him to sleep, unless he was on patrol in Halifax, where it paid to wear some extra layers and complain accordingly. “How are we to get to know each other better, Lady Kelby?”
“I don’t wish to know you.”
Her kiss told him otherwise. “If I agree to your husband’s plan— and that’s a big, Mt. Olympus–sized if—it will be easier if we are friends.”
“Friends!” Maris stopped dead on the street and dropped his arm. The tiny flowers stitched across the lace covering her face made it difficult to see her expression, but Reyn could well imagine it. “If you do change your mind, I would expect nothing but an efficient effort on your part. No friendship would be necessary.”
“You have the oddest idea of coupling, Lady Kelby. I’m not a dancing bear to be brought into the circus ring to perform and then put back in its cage.”
“No one called you any sort of animal! You will be well compensated. You already have been, may I remind you. You’ll have food and lodging and anything you like, within reason. But not my friendship.”
She was not making the venture any more enticing. Reyn would not have minded a little flattery or flirting, two things which Lady Kelby seemed incapable of.
“How do you expect to explain my presence at Kelby Hall?”
Maris resumed walking, her stride nearly as long as his. She was not some mincing debutante.
He pictured her racing down the long, straight avenue that led to Kelby Hall, wavy brown hair flying behind her. She probably always kept it pinned back, though. Everything about her was pinned, tight, buttoned.
He could change that.
If she let him.
“My husband will say you are a fellow antiquities enthusiast, come to help me catalogue what’s stored in crates in the attics. His father and grandfather—in fact, all the Earls of Kelby—were avid collectors, although not the scholar Henry is. If it wasn’t Etruscan, Henry had no interest in it. But now he’s curious. He would like to know exactly what’s up there before he dies. All you need do is be found with some notebooks and a pair of spectacles and dust in your hair and people will presume you’re an expert.”
It was Reyn’s turn to stop walking. “You’re joking. You expect me to catalogue that junk?” He could hardly think of anything more horrifying, unless he was asked to unwrap a mummy. There might even be one in some box stored in the attic.
“I shall be doing the actual cataloguing. I would never expect a man such as yourself to appreciate ancient history and civilizations. But it will give us an excuse to be together. No one will bother us while we’re working.”
“Why, Lady Kelby. Are you proposing to compromise me in broad daylight?”
“My eyes will be closed, Captain Durant. I expect you to close yours, too.”
Chapter 3
Reyn had a difficult evening. Patsy Rumford had not been fobbed off with a few cuddles and kisses, and he was ever so glad to see her husband return early from his club before being forced to go further. She may have been wanton at the society, but she was a dutiful wife at home. How she explained his visit to her husband he had no idea, but likely she would find her movements restricted in the future.
It would be something else she’d resent him for. Reyn was not convinced she’d keep her mouth shut about Lady Kelby, even if he’d promised her unlimited punishment and pleasure at a later date.
Worse, Lady Kelby had tattled on him. He’d come home to a tersely worded note from Mr. Ramsey on London List stationery, who urged him to keep his commitment to the Kelbys. It did not take a genius to read between the neatly printed lines. He had threatened to reveal Reyn’s recent coronation as a Monarch in one of his wretched gossip columns—not that anyone but his sister Ginny would care.
Reyn was already sorry he’d joined the society, for it had done nothing but make him feel a bit ridiculous, whacking at women—and some men—like a mad villain from one of the demented gothic Courtesan Court novels Ginny liked to read. If he hadn’t been at such loose ends . . . but there was a solution to all that. He could go to Kelby Hall and impersonate a bloody classics professor.
The Kelbys were collectively insane. While they