Her eyes twinkled merrily. As she prepared to go down the dance again, she said over her shoulder: “Which then, p-please?”
“The Roguish!” Lethbridge answered.
When the dance ended, and she would have rejoined Charlotte and Sir Roland, he drew her hand through his arm and led her towards the room where the refreshments were laid.
“Does Pommeroy amuse you? He does not me.”
“N-no, but there is Charlotte, and perhaps—”
“Forgive me,” said Lethbridge crisply, “but neither does Charlotte amuse me—Let me fetch you a glass of ratafia.”
He was back in a moment, and handed her a small glass. He stood beside her chair sipping his own claret and looking straight ahead of him in one of his abstracted fits.
Horatia looked up at him, wondering, as she so often did, why he should all at once have lost interest in her.
“Why the Roguish, my lord?”
He glanced down. “The Roguish?”