Page 37 of A Deal With a Notorious Devil
“There hasn’t been an outbreak in a hundred years, and besides, they’d be sending for an undertaker if I did.”
“Hell,” he grunted. “Tell them I over-imbibed last evening and am not fit for company.”
“Laurence knows better,” Phoebe said. “As he was present evening last. He’s got a tonic he swears by for just such an ailment, and he’d love nothing better than to inflict it upon you. And by the ingredients—and the smell—it might be a sight more pleasant simply to come to breakfast.”
“Fucking hell. There’s no getting out of it, is there?” he groaned through the cage of his fingers as he scrubbed his hands over his face, and a week ago, Phoebe might have found herself taken aback at the crudity. But such language had become, if not preciselywelcome, then at least a source of strange amusement. The background music of her life had become a chorus of foulwords uttered without regard to her tender ears, and there was something very nearly refreshing in it. Like audible evidence that he did not consider her half so much a lady as he did a friend. Someone with whom he did not have to mind his tongue or his thoughts.
“I’m afraid not,” she said.
“Go, then,” he grumbled. “I’ll be down shortly. And God help you if those miscreants you are unfortunate enough to call relations eat all the damned bacon.”
With a sigh of relief, Phoebe turned for the door and took herself off through it before he could reconsider his acquiescence, closing it softly behind her. Her hand lingered just a few seconds longer upon the handle than was necessary, and she paused to stop and think for a moment. He really did have a nice arse, even if she hadn’t anything else to compare it to.
But the rest of him had been practically covered in scars.
∞∞∞
The chatter of too damned many people and the scrape of cutlery across plates rose to meet Chris as at last he made it down to the dining room. In his banyan. Because if the Toogood clan couldn’t be arsed to await an invitation, then he couldn’t be arsed to garb himself appropriately.
But as the chatter faded at his entry, Chris realized he might have miscalculated. The last time they’d all been assembled in his presence, it had been a goddamned madhouse—a swirling cluster of people all glaring at him as if only good manners had prevented them from dragging him out into the garden to beat him senseless.
Now, in the relative calm of what looked to be a pleasant family breakfast, he could see them all clearly. He’d forgotten, somehow, due to the nebulousToogooddesignation which he had assigned to the lot of them, that Phoebe had six sisters, and each of them had married before her.
And married well. In addition to the viscount—the patriarch of the Toogood clan—his table boasted three barons, two earls, and a bloody marquess. Perhaps they’d contrived to begin a damned dynasty.
The marquess cleared his throat and said as amiably as could be expected, “You would have no reason to know this, but while it is acceptable to come to breakfast with family in one’s banyan, you are meant to have clothing beneath it. A shirt,” he suggested, “and knee-breeches, perhaps.”
“I am aware,” Chris said, and endeavored to put an extra stomp in his step, made more ominous by the punch of his cane against the floor as he made his way toward the head of the table, where the place beside Phoebe had been left conveniently vacant for him. “I simply don’t care.” The temptation lingered in his mind to show a bit of thigh as he took his seat just for the satisfaction of truly scandalizing, and yet—Phoebe sat beside him, stiff-spined, with such a pleading look in her eyes that he restrained himself.
She wanted him to make a good impression upon them. Or at least, as good an impression of which he was capable. Which, when one considered that he could hardly fall further in their esteem, oughtn’t be too terribly difficult.
Lady Toogood was the first to break the silence. “Mr. Moore, Laurence tells us that you both attended a dinner party last evening,” she said, with a delicate pat of her napkin to the corner of her mouth. “He tells us also that Lord Statham was in attendance.”
What had that to do with anything? “Yes,” Chris said, as hereached for the teapot nearest him and tried to pour himself a cup of tea.Tried. The damned thing was drained of all but a few drops, which hardly coated even the bottom of his cup. Resentfully, he plunked a couple of lumps of sugar into his cup anyway. “And?”
Lady Toogood directed her gaze to her husband, who was seated next to her, but the viscount seemed far more interested in the thick rashers of bacon upon his plate. Even a subtle clearing of her throat merited no reaction. Finally, the poor woman heaved a sigh so severe that the neatly-arranged greying curls piled artfully atop her head threatened to fall from their pins, made a quick motion that Chris suspected had precipitated the grunted ‘oof’sound her husband gave, and hissed, “Edgar.”
“What is it, m’dear?” The viscount inquired, his fork pausing over his plate. Lady Toogood narrowed her blue eyes and gave a sharp inclination of her head in Chris’ direction. “Oh, yes, quite right,” he said. “My wife tells me you attended a dinner party last evening.”
Phoebe smothered a groan behind her napkin, her shoulders sinking. Somewhere down the table, one of her sisters snickered. He couldn’t be certain which; he’d never bothered to ask their names and they had never offered them.
Baffled, Chris turned to Phoebe and made no effort whatsoever to modulate his voice. “Are they alwayslike this?”
“Yes,” she said. “One does grow accustomed to it.”
Lord Jesus, he hoped not.
“Edgar,” Lady Toogood said, with significantly less patience. “We have been through this already.”
“Really?” The man blinked, nonplussed. “Nobody told me.”
“I suppose you were too involved with eating the last of the damned bacon to notice,” Chris suggested, and beneath the table his hand fisted upon the handle of his cane so hard that his knuckles popped.
The viscount glanced down at his plate, then at the empty platter before him which contained not even one measly shred of the stuff. “It’s good bacon,” he said defensively.
“I know. Which is why my cook purchases it. Forme.”
“She’s got more coming,” Phoebe said, in a desperate attempt to avert the disaster blooming on the horizon. “I’ve also requested a fresh pot of tea and more scones.”
