I could hardly take her to bed and divert her with a night of untrammelled passion under your respectable roof instead, now could I, Lady Pemberley?’‘Not from want of trying, so far as I could tell just now.’‘You mean you didn’t position yourself cunningly enough so that you could see everything that went on between us in yonder mirror without Kate knowing it, my lady? How very noble of you.’‘You’re so sharp you run the worst risk of cutting yourself I ever came across in a man,’ she condemned with a strong hint of admiration.‘If I were that clever, I’d have taken myself off on that tour of the Continent the instant Boney set out for Elba in the year fourteen and it was open to travellers again for the first time in years, my lady.’‘Since you’re about to become an adoptive godson to me, you really must call me Eiliane from now on instead of all this my-ladying, but do you mean it?’‘Do I mean what, Eiliane?’‘You have a very annoying habit of answering a question with a question that could make me regret taking your side in all this after all, I hope you know?’ she said with gentle malice and he grinned back at her as if they understood each other perfectly.
