Stefanie expected Sir John's face to empurple at this saucy (if accurate) assessment, but instead he heaved a sigh. "Mr. Thomas, I have the honor to introduce to you my ward, Lady Charlotte Harlowe, who lives with me in Cadogan Square, and who will, I'm sure, have as much advice for you as she does for me."
Lady Charlotte held out her spotless little hand. "Mr. Thomas. How charming."
Stefanie strode forward and touched the ceremonial tips of her fingers. "Enchanted, Lady Charlotte."
"Indeed," said Sir John. "And I believe you've already made acquaintance with my nephew, the Marquess of Hatherfield."
"Your nephew?"
"Yes. Hatherfield practically lives in our drawing room, don't you, my boy?" Sir John looked grimly over her shoulder.
Stefanie turned. "Lord Hatherfield?"
She spoke with solemn composure, but her head was spinning. The Archangel was a marquis? Good God! What other gifts could possibly have been lavished on his head by an adoring Creator? Did he spin gold from his fingertips?
A marquis. And Sir John's nephew. Practically living in his drawing room, the old fellow had said.
God help her.
The Archangel Hatherfield grinned widely and shook her hand. The callouses tickled pleasantly against her palm. "It's a great pleasure to meet you, Mr. Thomas. I admire your pluck enormously, entering into my uncle's chambers like this. I daresay you charm snakes in your spare time?"
"Oh, I gave that up long ago," said Stefanie. "I kept tripping over the basket and losing the snake."
Hatherfield blinked at her once, twice. Then he threw back his head and howled with laughter. "Oh, Thomas," he said, wiping his eyes, "you're a dashed good sport. I like you already. You've got to take good care of this one, Uncle. Don't let him near the cyanide tablets like the last poor clerk."
"Really, Hatherfield," said Sir John, in a grumbly voice.
"Well, well. This is charming," said Lady Charlotte, looking anything but charmed. "I look forward to hearing Mr. Thomas's witticisms all the way back to London. How lucky we are."
The Duke of Olympia, who had been standing silently at the mantel throughout the exchange, spoke up at last. "Indeed, Lady Charlotte. I do believe that you will profit enormously from Mr. Thomas's company, both in the journey to London and, indeed"-he examined the remains of his sherry, polished it off, set the empty glass on the mantel, and smiled his beneficent ducal smile-"in your own home."
Lady Charlotte's already pale skin lost another layer of transparent rose. "In our home?" she asked, incredulous, turning to Sir John. "Our home?" she repeated, as she might say in my morning bath?
Sir John, impervious Sir John, iron instrument of British justice, passed a nervous hand over the bristling gray thicket of his brow. "Did I not mention it before, my dear?"
"You did not." She pronounced each word discretely: You. Did. Not.
"Well, well," said Hatherfield. "Jolly splendid news. I shall look very much forward to seeing you, Mr. Thomas, when my uncle can spare you. You will spare him from time to time, won't you, Sir John?"
"I will try," said Sir John, rather more faintly than Stefanie might have expected.
She was not, however, paying all that much attention to Sir John and his ward. Hatherfield had fixed her with his glorious blue-eyed gaze in that last sentence, and she was swimming somewhere in the middle of him, stroking with abandon, sending up a joyful spray of . . .
"Nonsense," said Lady Charlotte. "Clerks are meant to work, aren't they, Sir John? It costs a great deal to educate a young man in the practice of the law, and it must be paid somehow."
"Why, dear Lady Charlotte," said Hatherfield, without so much as a flicker of a glance in her direction, still gazing smilingly into Stefanie's transfixed face, "you speak as if you've ever performed a moment's useful work in your life."
A strangled noise came from the throat of the Duke of Olympia. He covered it quickly, with a brusque: "In any case, my friends, I see by the clock that you will miss your train if you delay another moment. I believe young Mr. Thomas's trunk has already been loaded on the chaise. I suggest we bid one another the customary tearful farewell and part our affectionate ways."
Hustle and bustle ensued, as it always did when Olympia issued a ducal decree. Stefanie's hand was shaken, her overcoat found, her steps urged out the front hall and into the chill November noontide, where the Duke of Olympia's elegant country chaise sat waiting with pawing steeds. To the left, the landscape dropped away into jagged slate cliffs, awash with foam, roaring with the distant crash of the angry sea.
"Cheerful prospect, what?" said Hatherfield.
"Barbaric," said Lady Charlotte. She reached the open door of the chaise and stood expectantly.
Stefanie, feeling unexpectedly lighthearted and therefore (as her sisters well knew) rather mischievous, grasped Lady Charlotte's fingers to assist her into the chaise.
A little gasp escaped her ladyship, an entirely different sort of gasp from the one that had greeted Stefanie's arrival on the threadbare rug of Olympia's Devon drawing room. She jerked her hand away as if stung.
"Is something the matter, Lady Charlotte?" asked Lord Hatherfield solemnly.
She raised one delicately etched eyebrow in his direction. "Only that I require your assistance into the vehicle, Hatherfield."
Hatherfield handed her in with a smile, but what Stefanie noticed most was not that golden smile, nor the unexpectedly gut-churning sight of his strong fingers locked with those of Lady Charlotte, but the expression on her ladyship's face. It had changed instantly at the point of contact, from sharp hauteur into something softer, something dulcet and melting and almost longing, something rather akin to . . .
Adoration.
* * *
The Marquess of Hatherfield swung himself into the carriage and tapped the roof with his cane. In deference to both Lady Charlotte and her august guardian, he took the backward-facing seat, next to young Mr. Thomas.
Mr. Thomas. Mr. Stephen Thomas. He glanced down at the plain wool legs next to his. Rather skinny legs, at that; particularly in comparison to his own, which were thick and hard, the quadriceps hewed into massive curves by nearly a decade spent powering racing shells through the rivers and lakes of England in an attempt to outpace the skulking shadows in his memory.
Yes, Mr. Thomas's legs had a curiously slender cast, beside his.
Which was only to be expected, of course, and not curious at all. For Hatherfield had gathered at a glance what the supposedly keen-eyed Sir John and the reputedly sharp-witted Lady Charlotte had, by all appearances, not begun to suspect.
It was quite obvious, really.
Mr. Thomas's legs were slender because he was a she.
A brash, clever, amusing, lovely, and elegant she. Ah, how she'd sprung right back up to her feet after her humiliating fall! How she'd joked about it afterward. A she for the ages.
The Marquess of Hatherfield straightened his gloves, settled back into his cushioned seat, and smiled out the window.