Page 5 of Sir Andrew and the Authoress

“Sterling has his uses,” Josie said airily. “Oh, look at that darling pair of earrings.” Distracting them from her guard was easy enough. The women gathered around a shop window to coo over baubles most of them could not afford with their pin money, despite being the daughters of the wealthiest men in the kingdom.

Josie looked over her shoulder at her guard, who made only brief eye contact with her before his eyes slid away to study the others in the long corridor of shops. Sterling was a newer member of the household staff, but thus far, he’d proved himself an alert and responsible guard.

They stopped at a milliner’s window next. “I cannot understand the fashion of wearing dead birds atop one’s bonnet.” Lady Helen scrutinized a large bonnet complete with bird’s nest and stuffed dove.

Miss Lesley wrinkled her nose. “It sounds terribly morbid when you describe it that way. Do you know what I wonder? Why the women of England are well-feathered and the men always dress so dull, in their blues and blacks. Did you know that in the French court the men dressed as finely, if not more so, than the women? And that was only a generation or two ago.”

“I have no desire to be escorted anywhere by a man better dressed than I am,” Lady Helen said. “What about you, Lady Josephine?”

Josie didn’t particularly care for the topic, so she only shrugged. “I suppose not.”

“Your brother always looks well groomed and tailored,” Lady Helen said, her eyes narrowing to speculative slits. “And that friend of his he always goes about with.”

“Sir Andrew,” Josie supplied. “I cannot say either of them have set about to be fashionable. I cannot recall ever hearing them speak about such things.”

“Is Sir Andrew often with your family?” Miss Lesley asked. “He certainly is handsome.”

“Troublesome, I should think,” Josie muttered.

Lady Helen didn’t seem to have heard her, as she took up the topic with zeal. “Oh, he is a delightful man. A marvelous dancer, and I have heard he is quite witty. But I cannot say I have ever been so fortunate as to have seen that wit.”

“Truly?” Josie turned away from the window she had peered through a moment before. “I would think he’d flirted with half the women in London by now.”

Miss Lesley and Lady Helen exchanged a wide-eyed glance. “I have never heard he has a reputation of that sort.” Miss Lesley adjusted the strings of the reticule at her wrist. “But now I think I ought to take it as an insult that he hasn’t flirted with me before. What a shame. He is—”

“Handsome, yes. So you said.” Lady Helen scoffed. “Oh, what are those charming little dolls in that window?” She leaned closer to scrutinize the delicate toys. “I have a niece who would adore that one, with the lace veil.”

Though the excuse of shopping with friends allowed Josephine to leave the house, the less than challenging conversation did not distract her enough. Although it did surprise her, somewhat, to know Andrew wasn’t considered a flirt.

As she had no wish to think on Andrew at present, she continued to turn over in her mind the plot of her novel. Had she made her hero too weak? Her heroine too strong? If only that horrid rejection letter had contained more specifics. The manuscript as a whole could not be so terrible, could it?

Josephine had considered herself mature beyond her years. The daughter of a duke ought to be more worldly than the daughter of a country clergyman. As that was precisely the situation of her heroine, she had truly thought herself equal to the task of writing about such a woman.

She wandered to the next shop ahead of her friends, looking through the glass to a perfumery. The shopkeeper had arranged dozens of bottles upon shelves, all of them different hues and shapes, and decorated the window’s corners with sprays of flowers to illustrate the scents that might be found within.

She stared through the glass, lips pursed, not truly focusing on the wares in front of her.

“Contemplating the serious nature of your personal odor, Josie?”

Her gaze flicked up to see the reflection of a certain fair-haired, dark-eyed irritant grinning at her. She narrowed her eyes at Sir Andrew. “I thought to make a present to you, but then I realized if I masked your current scent too well, I would not know of your approach in time to prepare myself for your company.”

“You recognize me by scent?” His eyes danced and his grin widened. “I hadn’t any inkling you paid attention to such personal details. Ought I to be flattered?”

She turned to look at him instead of the reflected image and batted her eyes as she said, “Only as flattered as a dog when scented by a doe.”

His eyes narrowed. “You view me as a hunter, my lady? With you as my quarry?”

“Not at all. I view you as an unpleasant disturbance to my day. A disturbance that smells strongly of dog.”

His grin returned, sharper than before. “Thus the contemplation of perfumes.” He nodded to the shop window. “But you know you cannot appreciate them from out here.”

“I have no intention of entering the shop today. I am merely admiring the window dressings with my friends.”

“Friends?” He arched his eyebrows at her. “What friends?”

She parted her lips to name them, turning as she did to where she had left the two ladies, but she found the spot they had occupied taken up by an older woman and her maid. Josie frowned and turned around, her eyes sweeping the Arcade and finding both Lady Helen and Miss Lesley nowhere in sight. She looked to her guard, who stood on the opposite side of the arcade, watching the area with care.

“They must have gone into one of the shops,” she said at last. “I am certain they will return momentarily.” Her thoughts had not made her inattentive overlong.