“Oh, I do say, though it is a secret I don’t share with just anyone.” The latest interloper said something that brought a loud guffaw.
Sylvia angled her head this way and that in a bid to glean the identity of the latest intruder, this one who’d managed to charm her butler, a butler who seemed to barely tolerate Sylvia, Valerie, and Annalee most days. She knew that voice. How did she know that voice?
Sylvia cleared her throat.
“Never would have thought of it . . .” Her butler laughed once more.
Ruthless visitor, indeed.
“Ahem.”
Mr. Flyaway jumped an inch, turning quickly to face her, his tall frame blocking the gentleman behind him. “Forgive me, my lady. Didn’t hear you coming. I was talking to the gentleman caller.”
“I see that,” she said dryly. She gave him a pointed look.
The butler hesitated a moment before ducking his head and stepping aside so she could, at last, face her nemesis head-on.
“I was informed that you were refusing to . . .” The diatribe she’d prepared on the way here and mentally shelved while her intruder spoke to Mr. Flyaway left her.
Sylvia cocked her head. At five inches past six feet, he was as tall as Mrs. Flyaway had braced her for. Only, she’d imagined the monster painted by the older woman as not broadly muscular.
With his cloak on and his hat perched atop a close crop of blond curls, the gentleman with a prominent square jaw and broad Roman nose, hooked slightly at the bridge, was familiar. Nay, more than familiar.
His arms were folded from the conversational exchange he’d been engaging in with Mr. Flyaway, and a copy of The Times hung from his fingers.
Surely there was a mistake? And the brute savage who’d invaded her household was not in fact this man . . . but another? Alas, just he and Mr. Flyaway remained.
His heavy features froze, giving way to a mask of disbelief and confusion.
The newspaper slipped from his fingers and fluttered to the marble floor.
Yes, well, that made two of them.
For the same man before her should be none other than the one who, on Sylvia’s wedding day, had stood beside Norman in friendship and support. Unlike her husband, who’d been a charmer and had an ease with his words, Viscount St. John had been given to long pauses and stiff politeness. He’d been . . . different from her urbane late husband, the friendship having been an unlikely one.
Except he had certainly charmed her usually ice-cold butler.
His jaw went slack, and he did a search throughout the foyer before settling his gaze once more on Sylvia . . . this time, his expression perfectly pained. “Youu?” The elongated syllables squeezed into the one, indicating he was, in fact, the one who’d come demanding an audience.
From the hallway came the rapid pitter-patter of footfalls as the society gathered upon them, and she found herself jerked out of the haze of confusion, taking strength in the support of the small army of might, the women behind her.
“Were you looking for another, Lord St. John?”
Chapter 5
Had he been looking for another, she’d asked.
The answer was absolutely, unequivocally, and undoubtedly yes.
He was to have met with some cold, unfeeling stranger who’d unintentionally dismantled the norms of society and left his friend brokenhearted, and Clayton with the problem of trying to find a wife when no women wanted to be found as wives.
Nay, the last woman in the whole of the United Kingdom whom he’d set out to meet was . . . her. In fact, for the better part of three years, he’d made a concerted effort to avoid her.
Sylvia.
His gaze went to the small army of women glaring back at him with their fearless liege at the front and center of the group.
The audience he’d imagined had always been private.
All his muscles seized up, clenching painfully in a taunting reminder of just how damned foolish it had been, setting out as he’d done.
He who, as Landon and Scarsdale had pointed out, never did anything . . . irrational.
“He doesn’t look like a monster,” someone whispered from within that gaggle of ladies.
To give his hands something to do, he doffed his hat and fiddled with the article. “Uh . . .”
He’d known precisely what he was going to say.
That knowing, however, wasn’t something innate that simply came to him. Rather, he’d planned and plotted each detail of the impending meeting because that was the way he had to move through life.
Where some men were glib with words and capable of disarming with a look and an effortless reply, Clayton had always been one who’d needed a whole menu of discourse prepared within his head.
All that suited him in parliamentary matters and business meetings and social affairs . . . as long as he’d an ability to prepare and everything went to script.
It was when it did not that he found himself slack-jawed and empty of a proper response . . . as he was in this very moment.
A member of their rather large audience groaned. “Whatever is he doing here?”
That voice, even more familiar, added to his absolute befuddlement. Furrowing his brow, he searched the group, his gaze landing on the flame-haired spitfire amongst them.
His eyebrows went shooting up. “Cora?”
What in hell?
A second figure amongst the masses slipped backward from the group, hiding behind the taller lady beside her, but not before Clayton made out the identity of another member of the party aggrieved by his presence.
He drew back. He might have expected Delia—with her of late very vocal disdain for men—would have found her way here. But . . . “Brenna?”
Both young women stepped forward . . .
Followed by . . . yet another.
He rubbed at his eyes.
The sight remained.
Well, this was really too much. “Anwen?”
“Whatever are you doing here?” Cora demanded, preparing to throw her periodical at him the way Cook had once taken down a mouse loose in the kitchens.
His sister would ask what he was doing here? Him? “It appears I am extricating you.”
It was the wrong thing to say.
Bedlam ensued. The fifteen or so women marched forward, moving in tandem like a wave crashing toward him . . . and he backed up several steps away from the crowd out for his blood.
Salvation came from the unlikeliest one of the group.
Sylvia stepped between Clayton and the gathering of snapping and hissing ladies.
And without so much as a word or hand gesture, she commanded that loyal legion to silence. “If you’ll excuse me? Lord St. John requested a word.”
“But . . . but . . . he interrupted our session,” Brenna said on an angry whisper to one of her compatriots. “How is she meeting him? How?”
She’d rather throw him to the lions, then.
Only Anwen cast a slightly sheepish glance his way. Tiptoeing over, she rescued his forgotten-until-now copy of The Times and held it out.
“Anwen!” Cora hissed.
Hurriedly releasing the newspaper into his hands, the eldest of his sisters rushed off to join the line of ladies now filing from the foyer until he was left alone with Sylvia . . . and Mr. Flyaway.
An awkward silence was all that was left of the departed group.
Returning his hat atop his head, Clayton beat the newspaper against the side of his leg, and that seemed to spring the butler into action.