Page 11 of A Bride for the Ruthless Duke

“Anything more, Your Grace?”

“Yes.”

Pearce looked up.

“Fresh flowers in the lady’s rooms at Pillard House.”

CHAPTER TWO

“Cousin, do you suppose a man who is seven minutes late means anything by it?”

Mrs. Dalton sat at the little writing table with her spectacles low on her nose and three letters of condolence spread before her like a campaign. Her quill moved steadily across the page.

“Mm,” she said.

Ellen glanced over her shoulder. “That is not an answer.”

“It is the answer most questions deserve when asked before noon.”

“It is nearly twelve.”

“Then perhaps the question may improve by luncheon.”

Ellen turned back to the roses, though the roses were behaving abominably. The late ones always did. She had cut them herself that morning from the last of the bushes in the narrow scrap of garden behind the house, the few brave blooms that remained after autumn had begun threatening everything tender. They smelled of nothing and bruised if handled with any firmness, and she was arranging them in the blue jug for the third time because arranging roses gave a lady’s hands employment while her heart behaved like an undisciplined schoolgirl.

The fault lay entirely with the door.

Lieutenant Vance had sent a note. He meant to call at twelve. It was now eleven minutes past, and Ellen had counted each one of those minutes with a composure that would have deceived no one who cared to look closely.

“Cousin,” she said, moving one pale rose from the left side of the jug to the right, “now it is eleven minutes.”

Mrs. Dalton blotted a line. “Then I must congratulate you upon your arithmetic.”

“Men are late for reasonable causes, are they not?”

“Frequently.”

“Regiments move. Orders arrive. Horses lose shoes. Colonels detain people. There are a great many explanations for eleven minutes.”

“There are more explanations than there are punctual men.”

Ellen frowned at a rose that had the insolence to droop. “You make it sound very ordinary.”

“My dear, lateness is one of the commonest forms of masculine self-expression.”

“He was once an hour late,” Ellen said, lowering her voice though no one had asked her to. “He arrived breathless and so sorry that one could hardly object to anything. I believe I forgave him before he was through the door.”

“I remember.”

Ellen looked back quickly. “Do you?”

“I remember that you pretended to be greatly offended and then gave him the better tea.”

“I did no such thing.”

“You gave him the tea in the silver caddy.”

“That was because the other had gone stale.”