Her lips twitched, but she managed to suppress her mirth. This evening had taken a decidedly strange turn. “Ah.”
“My mother named her. She is my mother’s cat.” He removed the hat from his head and raked his fingers through his hair, looking uncharacteristically ill at ease. “She has a preference for me, and thus, here she finds herself, the duchess having grown tired of Rosie’s caterwauling in my absence.”
Rosie.The viscount had a cat, and he had even given her a sobriquet. What an interesting discovery. The icy lord was far more complex than she had initially supposed, and Rosebud was one more example of that. He was a protective brother, a stickler for propriety, the heir to a duke who was well-known for his impeccable reputation, manners, and fashion. Yet, he was also the man who had kissed her with such fiery passion. The man who had brought her such delirious pleasure.
“Hmm,” Pen said noncommittally before turning her attention back to the feline. “Come, Rosie. You are a darling, aren’t you? So lovely.”
Apparently, Rosebud was far easier to win over than her master. The chintz cat sidled nearer, finally rubbing herself sinuously against Pen’s shins. She ran her hand along Rosie’s spine, pleased to find her fur sleek and soft. Quite unlike the stray, distrustful cats she tended and on occasion managed to touch before they scampered away.
The cat arched into her ministrations, a new sound emerging from her that was not quite a growl of displeasure, but rather…
“You are purring, aren’t you, Rosie my sweet?” she asked the cat with no small amount of smug satisfaction.
Rosie’s response was to flop to her back, presenting Pen with her mostly white, soft belly. Pen obliged, giving her a soft rub.
“Traitor.”
The grumble overhead reminded Pen that she and her newfound friend had an audience. And judging from the tone of his voice and the harsh set to his jaw, a disapproving one.
“It would seem your cat enjoys my company,” she told him, sending a grin in his direction.
Something shifted in his countenance. “If you are not my brother’s betrothed, then what the devil are you to him?” he demanded.
Perhaps Lord Lordly was struggling with the attraction he felt for her. It would certainly serve him right. Although he had accused her of far worse misdeeds, he was the one who had been kissing the woman he believed to be his brother’s betrothed at every turn. Even now, he had spirited her away, when there was no rational reason to do so and she had told the stubborn oaf that she had no intention of wedding Aidan and bringing shame to the hallowed Weir family or the Dukes of Dryden past, present, and future.
She had a moment to consider her response. It would have been within her right to mislead him. To tell him a Banbury story of a cock and a bull. She could easily invent any number of tales that would have him shuddering in horror. But such a victory would be hollow.
“I am his friend,” she said simply.
“Friend,” Garrick repeated, incredulous.
“Yes, his friend.” She turned her attention back to Rosie, who had begun batting at Pen’s hand, her sharp claws finding purchase. “Just as I am your friend, little minx,” she addressed the cat in the voice she ordinarily reserved for small children, her nieces included. “And if I am your friend, you mustn’t poke me with those claws of yours. It is most impolite.”
“Most impolite.”
She sighed and cast a glance over her shoulder at the viscount, which proved a mistake. He was looking down at her with so much intensity that a wave of longing hit her in the chest and nearly sent her sprawling.
“That’s what I said, Lordly.”
He shook his head, as if clearing it of some troubling thought with physical force. “Earlier, you called me Garrick.”
“That was before I remembered you have taken me captive out of some blockheaded notion I am somehow to blame for whatever ill has befallen Aidan,” she pointed out, rising to her feet and facing him. “Tell me, what is your plan for this evening? You have brought me to your town house, to your chamber. I have warned you that when my family discovers me missing, they will stop at nothing to find me, and yet you have insisted upon this farce. Where am I to sleep?”
“In my bed,” he said.
And she was sure she must have misheard him.
“In your bed? Apologies, yournabs, but whatever happened between us earlier ain’t going to be repeated.”
He huffed out the most endearing irritated sigh she had ever heard, which was proof she was every bit as addle-pated as the viscount was.
“Of course it is not,” he said stiffly. “What occurred earlier was…regrettable. As a gentleman of honor, I can assure you it shall never happen again.”
And what a pity that was, even if his use of the word regrettable made her long to plant her fist in his perfectly straight, patrician nose.
“Very regrettable,” she agreed. “If I’m meant to stay the night until you can pluck your head out of your arse, then I have some bad tidings for you, Lord Lordly.”
His nostrils flared at her deliberately coarse words. “I will thank you not to speak in such vulgar fashion, madam.”
“You’ll be sleeping on the floor,” she said, ignoring him. “Rosebud and I will be enjoying that fine bed of yours while we pay a call to the land of nod.”
His lips tightened, but he did not argue. “I was going to suggest as much myself, Miss Sutton.”
“Earlier, you called me Pen,” she reminded him in an intentional echo of his words.
“Earlier, I was daft,” he grumbled.
She could not suppress her grin. “You still are.”