“Oh, Sherry, it is so very like you to say that, when you know very well you have used me quite shockingly!” Hero said with a smile quivering on her lips. “You always did so! But you never called me ma’am in that horrid way before, and I would rather you boxed both my ears than did that, indeed I would!”
“Serve you right if I did!” said his lordship, stretching out a hand across the table. “No, really, Kitten, I’m devilish sorry I hurt you! But of all the things to have said — ! However, you won’t do it again!”
“No, truly I won’t!” Hero assured him, tucking her hand in his.
A reluctant grin stole across the Viscount’s face. “Lord, I’d have given a monkey to have seen Gil’s phiz when you asked him if he had an opera dancer!” he said.
“Do you think he may not have liked it?” Hero asked anxiously. “He is such a particular friend that I thought I might say what I pleased to him. And I did want to know, because you said that everyone had them, and — ”
“Oh, my God, the things I say!” groaned Sherry. “I wish you will forget them, brat! and as for my opera dancer, that is all over and done with now that I am a sober married man, so let us have no more talk of it!”
“I won’t say another word,” promised Hero, brightening perceptibly. “Can you not have them if you are married?”
The Viscount laughed and tossed a bill across the table. “Not if you have a wife who spends as much money on a couple of trumpery hats as that!” he replied.
“Oh, dear!” Hero said conscience-stricken. “Ought I not to have done so? Only, one is the hat I wore when we drove out to Richmond, and you particularly commended it, Sherry!”
“No, no, there’s no harm done!” Sherry said, tweaking one of her ringlets. “Extravagant little puss! Wear it again today! I’ll drive you round the Park, if you care to go with me. I want to try the paces of that pair of chestnuts I bought at Tatt’s last week.”