Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas Page B

my plan. You will not be yet one more capricious male to stand between my daughter and a coronet of strawberry leaves!”
    Langford's interest in the situation escalated dramatically, given that he was the only man in a fifty-mile radius known to possess a coronet of strawberry leaves—the ducal headgear worn at the coronation of a sovereign. He wasn't quite sure where his particular coronet was kept, though, there having been not a single British coronation during his lifetime.
    “Listen to me, Hector.” The woman lifted the kitten until the creature's eyes were level with her own. “Listen and listen well. If you do not cooperate, I will cut every ounce of fish, liver, tongue, you name it, out of your meals. What's more, I will bring a dog into the house and feed it foie gras right in front of you. A dog, you understand, a dirty cur like Gigi's Croesus.”
    The kitten meowed pathetically. The woman remained pitiless. “Now up you go, and stay this time.”
    And damned if the kitten didn't obey, meowing plaintively but staying put all the same. The woman let out a long sigh and slowly descended the ladder. Langford began moving again, tapping his walking stick purposefully on the packed soil of the lane.
    The woman turned at the sound. She was beautiful, with jet-dark hair, alabaster skin, and red lips, like Snow White after a few decades of happily-ever-after—and older than he'd supposed. From her voice and her figure he'd thought her somewhere in her thirties, but she was at least forty, likely more.
    At the sight of him, her eyes widened to the size of gold guineas, but she recovered quickly. “I do beg your pardon, sir.” She sounded breathless, nothing like the tyrant she'd been with Hector. “I don't mean to trouble you, but I can't get to my kitty. He is stuck up high.”
    He frowned. He had a fearsome frown, the kind that sent people scurrying to the opposite side of a room. “You have no groom or footman to retrieve the beast for you?”
    She was clearly offended by his reference to the fur ball but swallowed it. “I have given them the afternoon off, I'm afraid.”
    A woman who thought ahead, a rare phenomenon. Although, if he was pressed hard, he'd admit that men who thought ahead were equally rare. His frown deepened, but it seemed to have temporarily lost its menace, for she was not at all deterred by it.
    “Won't you be so kind as to retrieve it for me?” she asked, all fluttering handkerchief and feminine helplessness.
    A delightful conundrum. Should he rudely refuse and watch her crumple or play along for a bit of diversion?
    “Certainly,” he said. Why not? His life had become monotonous of late. And he'd been fond of charades and tableaux in his younger days.
    Eagerly, she stood aside and watched his approach with such idolatrous rapture that he felt like the Golden Calf itself. If he hadn't known that she was an ambitious mama who had him marked out for her daughter, he'd have thought she was out to ensnare him herself.
    He ascended the ladder, a rickety contraption that did not sound willing to hold his weight. The kitten had stopped its meows and regarded him uncertainly. He grabbed it by the scruff of its neck and brought it down. As soon as it could, the kitten jumped free of him and landed back in its mistress's bosom—an ample bosom that strained the front of her bodice very nicely.
    “Hector,” she cooed shamelessly. “You had me worried, you naughty kitten.” Hector, still frightened over a vegetarian future, did not contradict her. “How can I thank you enough, sir?”
    “It is gratification enough to be of assistance. Good afternoon, madam.”
    “But you must let me know your place of domicile at least, good sir!” she cried. “My cook makes an excellent strawberry cake. I shall have one sent to you.”
    “I thank you, madam. But I am not overly fond of strawberries.”
    “A cherry pie, then.”
    “I have nothing to do with cherries.” Now he'd see how far she'd go to