Page 85 of Lady Waldrey’s Gardening Almanac for Cultivating Scandal

The table was a lavish display—gleaming silver, sparkling crystal, and candlelight glimmering across gold-edged plates. Candace and Jacqueline sat side by side, leaving James and Vera on the other side of the table.

All was normal and well until the first course was set before them.

“This creamed soup is divine,” James said. “As soft as white rose petals against satin sheets.”

Candace sat straight; a hint of memory tickled the back of her mind.

“I never knew you had such a way with words, James,” Jacqueline said, dipping her spoon into the soup. “Though it does look delicious.”

“Indeed.” He nodded. “And the vegetables inside are so perfect they look as if they were chiseled from marble by a master sculptor.”

As he said the last, he looked up, his expression completely unaffected, but his eyes met Candace’s, and she knew. She remembered why his words struck a memory within her mind.

James wasn’t spewing flowery compliments about the food from momentary inspiration. He was reciting lines from her gothic novels. At the table. In full hearing of everyone else. Her eyes widened fractionally and he smiled serenely at her before she broke his gaze by looking down at her bowl.

She’d almost forgotten that Hortense had sent several books over. She and James had seen each other since; Candace thought if he were going to read the novels and mock her for their contents, he certainly would have done it before now. Privately. But no, he’d waited until he had an audience—a captive one, for it was only the first course, with many more to follow.

Candace suddenly regretted her thoroughness as a hostess—perhaps she could get a surreptitious message to Mrs. Penn to just send out a platter of ham sandwiches and be done with the whole evening.

All throughout dinner, James continued throwing out compliments that—to anyone else—would sound harmless, if not a bit overwrought. But to Candace, they were a secret message—that he’d not only read her tawdry gothic novels, he’d read them closely enough to memorize certain lines.

If that weren’t shocking enough, it seemed that he’d read several of them. He’d started with phrases from The Mistress of Mellbrook, then followed with lines from The Pirateer’s Secret. Candace could barely pay attention to the conversation by the time he’d started in on The Governess of Harrowsbeck Hall. Why, that was one of the worst! Why on earth had Hortense thought to send it?

Candace didn’t think anyone else at the table marked his comments—or if they did, they seemed to overlook them as eccentricities. Why else would a man compliment the gravy as being “dark as midnight secrets” or comment that the pheasant “glistened like dew in the moonlight”?

It was ridiculous. Surely Vera and the baroness could tell something was amiss, couldn’t they? But the other ladies didn’t seem to notice. They kept discussing the health of the baroness’s hedgehog, the weather, and the recent delay in the post from London. All the while, James dropped lines from Candace’s most scandalous books with an innocent air as Candace alternately flushed and fidgeted and prayed no one noticed.

“I cannot live without this lovely béarnaise,” he said ardently. “It’s as if fate has brought us together.”

The baroness said, “It is a remarkable sauce.”

Vera dipped the tines of her fork and put it in her mouth, then nodded. “Very nice.”

“What of you, Candace?” James asked, all false innocence. “Do you like the béarnaise?”

“It is…very well-balanced.” She prayed her cheeks weren’t as pink as they felt. Candace turned to Benson, who stood against the wall. “Please pass our compliments along to Mrs. Davis on her excellent sauce.”

“Of course, my lady.”

“And this pheasant,” James said minutes later, after he and the baroness discussed their plans for planting their lands along the river. “It’s heaven-sent. I feel I’ve been waiting my whole life for a pheasant like this.”

“It’s very fresh,” Candace explained, her smile feeling just the wrong side of demented.

James stared into her eyes, his lips trembling. “It must be. I say, I didn’t believe in love at first sight until I saw this pheasant.”

Dear heavens, he was quoting lines from the gazebo scene.

Redness crawled up her neck moment by moment. Was she sweating? She dared not lift a hand to her hairline to check. She glanced at the fire, wondering if she could blame excessive heat if anyone commented on her high color.

“You remind me of my eldest.” Jacqueline wagged her fork in James's direction. “He feels as passionately about food as you do.”

“A masculine trait in general, I believe,” Candace said, desperate to add something to the conversation besides stilted agreements whenever James bestowed another shocking compliment on the meal.

Jacqueline nodded. “Stephen simply adores Cook’s strawberry tarts. Not that I can blame him—we all go wild for them. The second they’re in season, James, I shall send you a dozen, and then you’ll really be inspired to write poetry.”

“Do you write poetry, James?” Vera asked.

“Indeed not. I fear all the best lines have already been written. All my writings would be derivative. For example, I might write that the eyes of the fish are like twin pools of seawater, or that it has luminous skin, or that I can’t imagine going on without it. But I’m sure that someone else has already written those sentiments before, and probably expressed them much better than I could. My words would most likely sound as if they were stolen from some cheap, tawdry novel.”