He came limping over to collect his hat.
“No need,” Clayton assured. “It was splendid chatting. Be sure and look for one of those triple-gear leads.” He made the motion as if he were reeling something.
Sylvia creased her brow. What in blazes was a triple-gear lead?
“Not even sure where I might find such a thing,” her butler was saying. “But if you return—”
“Ahem.”
Mr. Flyaway glanced over at Sylvia and blushed.
“Anything else you require, my lady?” the butler asked gruffly, his gaze directed at the floor.
“No, Mr. Flyaway. You’ve been help enough already.” There was a dry quality to her voice that earned a blush from the stalwart butler. “If you’ll follow me, Lord St. John.” Sylvia didn’t wait to see if Clayton followed, just turned quickly on her heel in a whirl of silvery satin skirts and marched off.
Her steps were measured, with a military precision that matched the ramrod stiffness of her spine. And not for the first time since Clayton had discovered the identity of whom he’d sought out, he contemplated making his excuses and getting the holy hell out of there.
“She’s not so scary,” Mr. Flyaway said on a loud whisper that brought the lady to a stop.
She faced the pair of them and lifted an eyebrow. “Is there . . . a sudden lack of urgency to your meeting request?” she drawled. Her low contralto carried from the hall and rose through the soaring foyer.
“Er . . .”
“I suggest you go before she changes her mind,” Mr. Flyaway said from the corner of his mouth. “The lady of the household doesn’t grant visitors. Especially those of the male persuasion.”
Heeding the older man’s advice, Clayton hurried to join Sylvia.
Sylvia, who did not pause to wait but continued on ahead without him.
Which was fine.
This was hardly a social call.
In fact, it was anything but.
The motives for his visit hadn’t changed because of her identity. In fact, her identity—the woman he knew her to be—gave him the first hint of confidence in the outcome of their meeting. Sylvia had always been reasonable and logical, and as such, he’d no doubt it wouldn’t take altogether much for her to see the concerns he’d brought her way.
They reached the end of the hall, and she pressed a handle, wordlessly motioning for Clayton to enter.
He hesitated, gesturing. “After you, my lady.”
“I think I’m quite capable of establishing the rules of my household, Lord St. John.”
“And . . . your rules are that men enter rooms before women?” he asked, slightly confounded and trying to sort through this unexpected battle.
She narrowed her eyes. “Are you being sarcastic, Lord St. John?” She clipped out each syllable of each word.
“Not at all.” Alas, he wasn’t capable of sarcasm. Directness, straightforwardness, yes. But playing with words and tones was something he’d never mastered—nor, for that matter, had he attempted to. “I assure you, I’m not one who—”
She jabbed a finger toward the room.
“Uh, right. Of course.”
Clayton entered the parlor. Or—he passed his gaze over the room. It had some of the trappings of a parlor, and yet, with a French Mazarin desk at the center of the room and a series of cabinets beside it, the space had been converted into more of an office.
The moment she’d closed the door, she spoke. “I don’t run a household where women are beholden to strictures that say when they may or may not enter rooms, or who should have the right to determine such a thing. Am I clear?”
“Yes. Very much so.”
Just as it was increasingly clear that he had a good deal less control of this exchange than he’d hoped to have.
Taking a moment to reassemble the thoughts that had scattered upon his arrival, he went through everything he’d prepared at White’s and on the way here.
She folded her arms. “I trust you disapprove?”
And just like that, the unexpected question knocked his thoughts off kilter.
“Who are you to come here and demand an audience?”
Clayton tugged at the collar of his cloak. “I didn’t really demand an audience.”
“Didn’t you?” she challenged, taking a bold step forward that sent him into a reflexive retreat. “You come here, charming my butler into allowing you to remain.”
This was surely the first, last, and only time he’d ever be known for charming anyone. “I was merely speaking to him until—”
“Until I was forced to receive you.”
He shifted his hat awkwardly between his hands. When she put it that way . . . “You are right. Forgive me. I didn’t realize it was you.”
She winged up a thin blonde eyebrow. “And would it have changed anything had you known it was me?”
Absolutely. He never, ever would have ventured down Waverton Street, let alone lifted the bronzed knocker over her door. Clayton looking in on, and after, Sylvia had been the one request that had been put to him before Norman’s untimely death . . . and it was the one guarantee he’d never given. Avoiding her eyes, he did another pass of his gaze over her room. “Perhaps we might . . . sit?”
She stiffened, and for a very long, endless, awkward moment, he thought she’d reject that request. Nor would it be the first time in the course of his thirtysomething years that he had been met with rejection from a woman. Awkward and rarely in possession of the right words, he’d never had the charm that had allowed Norman to woo her. Or countless other women.
Finally, she stretched a hand to the upholstered purple sofa, waiting until he was seated before taking one of her own.
“I don’t remember you to be one to storm households.”
Nay, he’d never done something so . . . forward or improper. Alas, desperate times and all that.
“And I don’t recall you as one hosting incendiary meetings.”
Outrage had a sound, and it was the swift exhalation of offended air that slipped from her lips.
Oh, bloody hell.
“Not that your meetings are necessarily incendiary,” he said on a rush, attempting to put out the fire he’d lit with his loose tongue. “I’m sure they are not. That is why I’m here.”
“You are here to make sure my meetings are not . . . incendiary?” By the slow, measured way she drew out each word of that sentence, he knew he’d bungled it all over again.
Clayton set his hat down at his feet. “No.” Returning to the script he’d composed on his way to the lady’s household, he picked through to those words first. “There has been talk about—”
“And you are one to listen to gossip?”
He bristled. “Of course not.”
She lifted another perfectly formed thin blonde brow. “And yet, here you are . . . because of talk.”
Touché. She had him there. Only . . . it wasn’t necessarily gossip that had brought him here. Not completely. “I’m here to discuss your club, my lady.”
“Society.”
Was there a difference?
As if he’d asked the very question aloud, Sylvia elucidated. “Clubs are where gentlemen meet for brandies and cards. Societies are where actual change happens.”