down, Jennie,” Kit said gently, then waited impatiently as she took up her seat on a straight-backed chair positioned at the far side of the room. “Would you like me to ring Renfrew for some tea? No? Then I suggest we get right down to it.”
Jennie jumped slightly—just as if he had suggested they lie down on the Aubusson carpet and proceed to make mad, passionate love—and Kit hastened to explain the reason for his summons. “We must organize this household, Jennie, as Renfrew and the skeleton staff my late uncle kept here are not sufficient to our needs if we mean to entertain during the Season.”
“We mean to entertain?” Jennie asked, trying to imagine herself in the role of hostess of this great mansion and failing dismally.
“We do. Unless that presents a problem?” Bourne inquired, deliberately needling her.
“Of course it doesn’t,” Jennie assured him through clenched teeth, wanting nothing more than to box his lordship’s ears. “I’ll set about hiring extra staff as soon as possible.”
“Renfrew will arrange things with a reputable agency, and you will only have to select from a group of eligible applicants.” Kit saw no possible way Jennie could land in the briers with the resourceful Renfrew to guide her.
“Oh,” Jennie murmured confusedly. “I had thought to place an advertisement about, as we do at home sometimes if the need arises.”
Kit quickly explained the folly of ever advertising for domestic help—heaven only knowing what sort of riffraff might then show up in Berkeley Square looking for a handout. At Jennie’s nod he promptly considered the matter to have been satisfactorily settled and went on to discuss a more delicate topic—one he had been secretly dreading to broach.
“Jennie,” he said gently, dropping to one knee beside her chair, “after giving the matter a good deal of thought, and with due consideration of your sensibilities and the uniqueness of our situation, I have decided not to ask for my husbandly rights just yet. I believe we should first become more comfortable with each other.”
“Oh, good!” Jennie exclaimed happily, before she could temper her response. “That is, I mean, why?…No! Don’t answer that. I don’t mean why, exactly. Disregard that if you will, please. What I mean to say is—thank you.” As Kit’s eyebrows shot up, she stumbled on hastily, “No! I didn’t mean that either, did I? I’m sorry I interrupted you, my lord,” she said, belatedly striving to behave like something more than completely brainless. “Please, continue. You were saying—”
“Actually, pet, I was done saying,” he told her, stifling his amusement at her obvious agitation. But this amusement changed rapidly to confusion as Jennie’s eyes took on a hard glint and her chin lifted in determination. “Now what?” he was then foolish enough to inquire.
Jennie, who should have been feeling nothing less than tremendous relief, had suddenly decided that the man in front of her was nothing less than the greatest beast in nature. How dare he decide not to exercise his rights? How dare he tell her anything? It was she who would do the telling!
As Kit watched, Jennie’s face did its little chameleon trick yet again and became soft and almost pleading in its woebegone expression. “Then you do not want me, my lord? I do not appeal to you—perhaps even repel you?”
Looking up at her, his heart touched by her wide, sad eyes, Kit protested passionately, “Of course I want you, infant. You appeal to me immensely. Isn’t that how we found ourselves in this situation in the first place?”
Now Jennie smiled in earnest. Rising to look down on her still-kneeling husband, she informed him brightly, “That is a great pity, my lord husband. For I do not want you, which is why I was so glad you requested this meeting. I was looking forward to telling you that you may have taken my hand in marriage, but that is all you will take from me.” So saying, and with her gape-mouthed husband looking on, she swept out of the room, at last looking every inch the countess.
CHAPTER FOUR
KIT ENTERED the dim main room of the Guards Club and cast his eyes about in the gloom with the alert, roving gaze of a man who has served on the Peninsula. He quickly spotted and nodded to several acquaintances, but it was not until his scrutiny was rewarded with the sight of one fellow in particular that he smiled and started across the uneven sanded floor of the converted coffeehouse.
“Ozzy, you old dog,” he called out loudly as he advanced on a painfully stylish young man of fashion sprawling at his ease at a table in the corner. “I knew I could count on you to be here.”
Ozzy Norwood, who had just then been profoundly contemplating a fly walking backward up the table leg and wondering that such powers would be given to a mere insect and yet denied one such as himself, was so startled at this violent intrusion upon his thoughts that his legs—which had been propped on a facing chair—slid from under him and his rump took up a closer association with the hard floor.
His mood, as he had over the years become accustomed to his own clumsiness, was not darkened by his ignominious position, and he swiftly if not gracefully regained his feet in time to be caught up in Kit’s enthusiastic bear hug of a greeting.
“Kit! Kit by damn Wilde! I’d heard you cashed it in at Badajoz,” Ozzy exclaimed when he could get his breath. “You’re no ghost, though. My bruised ribs can attest to that, by God! Let me loose, you great hairy beast, and let me look at you. What a sight you are, man.”
What Ozzy saw was his old friend and fellow officer: a little leaner, perhaps; a little tougher, most definitely; but those smiling eyes were still those of the Kit Wilde Ozzy had hero-worshiped since they were both in short coats. “You look wonderful, friend, and I mean it truly. Sit down. Where did you spring from? Last I heard you were wounded and not expected to make it. I took a ball in the shoulder in a damn silly skirmish in some benighted Spanish slum village soon after Badajoz and sold out—my heart just wasn’t in it, what with you gone and all—but I couldn’t get word of you anywhere. It was as if you fell off the face of the earth. Girl! Bring us a bottle of your finest! Sit down, I said, Kit, and stop standing there grinning like a bear. Have you nothing at all to say for yourself?”
Kit could only laugh and shake his head. “I find it gratifying in the extreme, Ozzy, that some things never change. You’re still chattering nineteen to the dozen, and woe betide anyone who dares to attempt to slide a word in edgewise.” Seating himself across the table from his friend, he took up the bottle the servant wench had brought and drank from it, saying, “Best order another for yourself, old man, as I’ve got plans for this one.”
“Girl!” Ozzy bellowed, thinking Kit was out to make a night of it and more than willing to match him drink for drink. “Bring a bottle. Bring a dozen bottles! Eh? Oh, yes, Kit, of course. And two glasses, you silly chit; what kind of heathens do you think you’ve got here?”
Three hours and more than a half-dozen bottles later, Kit and Ozzy were still sitting at the table, their reminiscences of the Peninsula having brought tears as well as smiles as their thoughts passed over events past and friends lost, and they were at last ready to speak about the present.
“Earl of Bourne, is it?” Ozzy repeated, clearly pleased for his old friend. “Well, if that don’t beat the Dutch. And there you were hobnobbing around the muck of Spain like the rest of us, just as if you was ordinary folk. Why ain’t you rubbing shoulders with the rest of the nobs at White’s or Boodle’s, instead of this lowlife at the bottom of St. James’s?”
“Oh,
