A Christmas Gambol by Joan Smith Page A

rational gentleman more than twice your age?”
    “Every unattached gentleman a lady meets is a potential husband.”
    “It was only a few hours ago you voiced your reluctance to marry.”
    “So I did, but reluctance can always be talked away by the right man. We ladies are optimists who invariably feel we can make a silk purse from whatever sow’s ear turns up, as the alternative is to be a spinster, shunted from pillar to post. His age doesn’t bother me. I admire his mind. We shall see how our visit goes tomorrow.”
    “I was to take you to Bond Street tomorrow,” Montaigne reminded her with another of those sharp jabs of annoyance.
    “Sir Giles is coming in the morning. He wants to discuss Chaos Is Come Again in more detail, for the piece he is writing for the Edinburgh Review.”
    This good news jerked Montaigne out of his pique. “He is doing a whole piece?”
    “Yes, a sympathetic piece.”
    “Then I daresay you must keep him in curl until it is done,” he said reluctantly.
    “For the sake of the orphans,” she added, not with her usual mischievous grin, but with real concern. “That is not the only reason I am going out with him, however. He is just the mentor I require for my writing. I hope to lure him into a correspondence after I return to Elmdale.”
    “Charming. It hasn’t taken London long to debauch you.”
    “Honi soit qui mal y pense. Naturally I don’t mean a clandestine exchange of billet-doux but a professional correspondence. He will suggest books for me to read, and so on. Perhaps he has a translation of the classical scholars to lend me, as a certain someone failed to bring me the copy he promised.”
    “I looked! I don’t happen to have it in my London house. I expect it is in the library at the abbey.”
    “Never mind. Sir Giles will tell me where I can buy a copy for myself. I want his opinion of the book I have already written, too. I think he will like it better than Chews.”
    “I agreed to show Murray your book. That was our bargain.”
    “I should appreciate Sir Giles’s opinion as well.”
    As it was still early when they returned to Berkeley Square, Montaigne invited himself in for a glass of wine. He did not remain long, however. He had heard quite enough of the wonders of Sir Giles Gresham for one evening. And to cap his disgust, the mawworm had told Sissie about Debora Davis. With Sissie’s sharp intuition, she would soon leap to the truth—that he had written Chaos Is Come Again himself.
    But after he drove home, it was not about Sir Giles’s revealing his secret that he worried. It was that Sissie would soon be imagining she was in love with the mawworm. She was still a green girl, even if Meg had rigged her out to look like a dasher. Sir Giles might think she was older and more worldly than she was—and certainly richer, after reaping the rewards of Chaos.
    Montaigne had brought Sissie to London; she was under his protection. There was no counting on the chit to behave herself. He could hardly send her dashing back to Elmdale tomorrow, but the next morning, bright and early, he would send her home.
    Yet this did not entirely please him, either. It seemed rude, surly. She had done him a great service. He ought to reward her in some manner. Take her to a rout party. The Fairlys were giving her rack and manger. Fairly had replaced him in one outing; Sir Giles was visiting her. It would be too shabby for him not to entertain her a little, after asking her to come here. She would enjoy a fashionable rout party, for her research.
    He mentally scanned the invitations he had received, and chose Lady Radcliffe’s rout for the next evening. Meg would lend her a gown. He began imagining Sissie in various gowns he had seen on Meg. Really very dashing gowns. No wonder the gents were all falling over her. He would ask her to wear her own gown with the new ribbons.
    A fond smile curved his lips, to think of Sissie romping about in her provincial gown, no doubt with a