“That’s what thetonconsiders charming these days?” Edgar asked incredulously.
A gentleman in a ridiculously high collar with his hair plastered in waves over his ears and over his forehead minced along the footpath, waving a lace-edged handkerchief at every lady he saw.
“Oh yes.” Lady Blanche nodded emphatically, setting her golden ringlets bobbing under her pink bonnet. “Lord Crewe is an Exquisite and everyone consults him on matters of taste. He’s the arbitrator of the elegancies.”
“Matters of taste?” The man was wearing moremaquillageupon his face than a bawdy house madam.
Crewe raised his quizzing glass to stare at them as they passed him.
Crewe waved his frilly handkerchief and Lady Blanche let out the breath she’d been holding in a loud exhale and happily waggled her fingers at him.
“Did you see that? He waved at me,” she said triumphantly.
“Congratulations.”
“You don’t find him exquisite?” asked Lady Blanche.
“That’s not the adjective I would use,” said Edgar.
Just as he’d promised West, they were putting in a fashionable appearance in his two-horse curricle, setting tongues wagging and drawing curious stares.
Lady Blanche had been nattering on about the intrigues of thetonthe entire carriage ride.
She was everything his mother could ever hope for in a match for him. A wellborn English rose with a tidy fortune. But she didn’t interest him in the least.
As she prattled on about ladies and lords, balls and bonnets, and all the other tiresome goings-on of the fashionable set, Edgar’s thoughts ran toward aprons.
More specifically, apron strings tied with bows.
And the untying thereof.
He gripped the reins tighter. His mind had been in a constant loop, going over and over that moment with Miss Perkins.
The one where she’d stood on tiptoes, placed her hands on his chest, and said she felt like being bad.
There were so many other ways the evening could have progressed.
He could imagine at least twenty.
His imagination had been going down the wrong paths ever since. The ones that began with him kissing her, and ended with her in his bed, moaning his name as she reached her pleasure.
“Your Grace.”
“Um, yes?”
“Are you listening to me?”
“Yes. What were you saying?”
She sighed. “You’ve been away from society too long. You don’t flirt properly. You’re supposed to make Lord Laxton jealous with your attentiveness, you know.”
“Well I’m not going to wave a frilly handkerchief at you, if that’s what you want.”
“You’re no Exquisite, and that’s certain.” She turned her head toward him. “Your shoulders are far too broad. Are you a Corinthian, I wonder?” She tapped her pink parasol against his knee. “Do you box, fence, and ride?”
Lady Blanche seemed to want to fit everyone into neat little boxes.
“I lift barrows full of coal and stoke foundry fires,” he replied.