Page 13 of Never a Proper Lady

“Did you consider Charlotte at all, Constantine?” Mother flicked her black lace, hand-painted fan open and waved it before her face. “How your recklessness could affect her wedding?”

Constantine would vow that Charlotte didn’t give two wags of a lamb’s tail. She would marry her vicar, and they’d live in blissful matrimony all their days.

Or was it happily ever after?

Mother’s elegantly plucked winged eyebrows arched in anticipation, her expectant gaze boring into him.

“I’ve explained the situation, Mother. Nothing untoward was suggested, nor has it occurred. Berkham can vouch for the truth of that. I haven’t seen Miss Roth since Edyth escorted her into the house.”

Constantine had intended to send a note round to Miss Roth, inquiring after her health, but he’d been detained by one guest or family member after another all afternoon. Before he knew it, it had been time to dress for dinner.

Precisely why he limited his sojourns to Dovetonwick Court.

How was a man expected to get any work done with people wanting to converse all the time? There was something to be said for silence.

“That may be so, Con.” Father scratched above his ear, his gaze brimming with wisdom. Gray peppered his sideburns and shock of honey-brown hair. “But you know as well as I do, devious minds don’t need more than a hint of impropriety to stir up a scandalous tempest.”

Constantine spread his hands wide. “I meant no harm.”

In fact, he’d thought himself quite the gallant. Chivalrous and all that claptrap, sacrificing his comfort for a damsel in distress. In general, he wasn’t much for courtly posturing. He couldn’t even account for his impetuous offer. The words had tumbled off his tongue like water plunging over a fall.

Who would’ve thought an extra female guest would throw the entire household into a tizzy? But then, what did he know of such matters? Housekeepers, mothers, sisters, and wives attended to such tedious details.

“You are an old-fashioned fart, Kell.” Ronan Brockman’s mocking accusation, which had led to the ridiculous wager, echoed in Constantine’s mind.

Constantine deliberately veered his attention from Brockman’s accusing, humor-filled voice to Harvey’s glum tones earlier today.

Harvey had informed him shortly after their arrival that his third-story chamber was no larger than a horse stall and contained a single bed.

Under no circumstances would Constantine sleep with knobby-kneed Harvey, friend or not. Harvey might wear a nightshirt to bed, but Constantine didn’t.

The implication didn’t bear contemplating.

Wouldn’t that give the rumormongers a succulent morsel to bandy about?

He almost permitted the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth to bloom into full humor. But that would mean explaining the irregular and somewhat risqué path his thoughts had paraded down to his parents.

He dismissed the notion of sharing a chamber with Harvey, opting instead to utilize his brother Cedric’s bedchamber, as Cedric had yet to arrive from London.

Embly had supplied that helpful snippet of information as any good valet worth his pay would’ve done.

The war secretary seemed reluctant to have his favorite attaché absent from Whitehall. At least that was the official reason Cedric had given in his letter to their parents, explaining he wouldn’t arrive until Friday.

Constantine had long suspected the middle Kellinggrave brother was a spy.

Believing Miss Roth snuggly ensconced in his bedchamber, slumbering away the adverse effects of their journey, Constantine had changed into his evening attire in Cedric’s room.

“At least Edyth had the good sense to put Miss Roth in her chamber to rest and not yours,” Mother said with a particularly vigorous flap of her fan.

Constantine jerked his head up. “She did?”

Why hadn’t Embly disclosed that critical detail?

Mother went on as if she hadn’t heard him.

“Though I nearly suffered apoplexy when Berkham told me you’d given your chamber to your female scrivener.” Shaking her elegantly coiffed head, her diamond earrings swinging back and forth in her exuberance, Mother pointed at Constantine. “I’ll have the why of that from you too, but not presently.”

“Quite unusual, my boy,” Father put in conversationally. “A female scribe. Is she any good at the craft?”