Teasing Your Wicked Heart

CHAPTER 6

This lady was ghastly.

"What I mean to say is, my lord, what is your given name? Surely, we can't be friends if—"

Suddenly, she stood, the chair scraping painfully against the floor. She took a scone from across the table, sat back down, and broke the scone in half with her fingers.

"We can't be friends if I do not call you by your first name, Killsworth." She smiled swiftly at him as she waved the butter knife, slapping a thick spread of her special berry jam. "Unless you really intend for me to call you Killsworth."

He hadn't really intended for her to do anything with regard to his person.

She gestured with the knife and pointed at the jam. "You must try the jam. I promise you, you wouldn't be disappointed."

Killsworth was a name most male acquaintances and friends used, but he had allowed some of his female friends to use his given name. What harm would it do?

He hesitated for a split second and then formed his name. "Anthony." He cleared his throat as his own name felt unusual to his lips.

He wondered if she knew how much familiarity belied allowing each other by their given names. He knew some married members of the ton to never even use their given names.

They used many other names, often derogatory if they weren't in good terms, but that was hardly the point.

"Hmm?" Apparently, she didn't hear him and popped the whole, bloody hell, the whole scone into her mouth.

Anthony's gut clenched. Surely, someone from the heavens is mocking him. A savage in the form of a lady was thrust upon his arms, quite literally, to become his responsibility. They must be performing a cruel sort of joke.

"I said, I am Anthony. Anthony Llevy-Dorth is my given name." He poked the ham from his plate. Gingerly, he sliced a bit and let it slide carefully in his mouth. "You may call me as you wish."

"That's very nice. I do feel like we're going to be friends," she said, as she took a gulp of tea, and dabbed the cloth gently on her mouth. "It will be a very welcome change, since most of the old Lord Rosenbergs hadn't been around long enough to become my friends."

The ham got stuck in his throat. Just what did she mean by that?

"Oh!" Finally, the impertinent chit had the decency to blush.

She judged his uncomfortable expression and smiled sheepishly. "There is no way that I may put this nicely, but I had not killed them. I assure you, I do not go about the country, murdering Earls."

He did not know what to say to that. He covered his lips with a coffee cup.

"They had just been so old. Oh so, so, so old." Her voice rising at the second mention of so.

Clearly, the Earls had been old, of that he had no doubt.

"And one way or another, can you believe it? They had found themselves dead. It was a bloody nuisance actually."

Anthony's lips spread into a wide grin on the tip of the coffee cup. And this lady swears, how nice.

"One by one, they fell like bone sticks. Heavens, I even asked a witch—"

"I beg your pardon?" He interrupted, because really, a man can only take as much.

"She may not be a witch, but she might as well have been. She predicts the future you know, and she has happily proclaimed that I am not cursed. She even swore it on her husband's grave." She smiled. "And do you know, the husband's not even dead yet."