Her back stiffened. “I beg your pardon.”
“Auctioning your friend off to the highest bidder. You’ll be well-practiced by the time you have a daughter.”
She jumped to her feet, her eyes flashing with anger and indignation. “That is a terrible thing to say. My most important consideration has always been Hermione’s happiness. And if she can be made happy by an earl . . . who happens to be my brother . . .”
Oh, brilliant. Now she was going to try to match Hermione with Fennsworth. Well done, Gregory. Well done, indeed.
“She can be made happy by me,” he said, rising to his feet. And it was true. He’d made her laugh twice this morning, even if she had not done the same for him.
“Of course she can,” Lady Lucinda said. “And heavens, she probably will if you don’t muck it up. Richard is too young to marry, anyway. He’s only two-and-twenty.”
Gregory eyed her curiously. Now she sounded as if she were back to him as the best candidate. What was she about, anyway?
“And,” she added, impatiently tucking a lock of her dark blond hair behind her ear when the wind whipped it into her face, “he is not in love with her. I’m quite certain of it.”
Neither one of them seemed to have anything to add to that, so, since they were both already on their feet, Gregory motioned toward the house. “Shall we return?”
She nodded, and they departed at a leisurely pace.
“This still does not solve the problem of Mr. Edmonds,” Gregory remarked.
She gave him a funny look.
“What was that for?” he demanded.
And she actually giggled. Well, perhaps not a giggle, but she did do that breathy thing with her nose people did when they were rather amused. “It was nothing,” she said, still smiling. “I’m rather impressed, actually, that you didn’t pretend to not remember his name.”
“What, should I have called him Mr. Edwards, and then Mr. Ellington, and then Mr. Edifice, and—”
Lucy gave him an arch look. “You would have lost all of my respect, I assure you.”
“The horror. Oh, the horror,” he said, laying one hand over his heart.
She glanced at him over her shoulder with a mischievous smile. “It was a near miss.”
He looked unconcerned. “I’m a terrible shot, but I do know how to dodge a bullet.”
Now that made her curious. “I’ve never known a man who would admit to being a bad shot.”
He shrugged. “There are some things one simply can’t avoid. I shall always be the Bridgerton who can be bested at close range by his sister.”
“The one you told me about?”
“All of them,” he admitted.
“Oh.” She frowned. There ought to be some sort of prescribed statement for such a situation. What did one say when a gentleman confessed to a shortcoming? She couldn’t recall ever hearing one do so before, but surely, sometime in the course of history, some gentleman had. And someone would have had to make a reply.
She blinked, waiting for something meaningful to come to mind. Nothing did.
And then—
“Hermione can’t dance.” It just popped out of her mouth, with no direction whatsoever from her head.
Good gracious, that was meant to be meaningful?
He stopped, turning to her with a curious expression. Or maybe it was more that he was startled. Probably both. And he said the only thing she imagined one could say under the circumstances:
“I beg your pardon?”