Page 21 of Two Vows and a Viscount

“Ah yes, Fulvia’s dowry in stocks and bonds.”

Ella bit her lip. Lord Peregrine obviously knew there was no dowry; he was taunting her.

“Goodness, me, I think you just had Unkind Thought #5 for the day,” Lord Peregrine said, pure delight in his voice. That grin changed his face from sardonic to …

Something else. Something devastatingly attractive.

Ella hastily took another sip of champagne. “We should return to the box.”

“Probably we have allowed all of London to compare my two fiancées.”

“Peas in a pod,” Ella said, giggling—realizing a moment too late that the champagne had gone to her head.

Lord Peregrine raised an eyebrow.

“You have marked requirements, don’t you?” Ella said cheerfully. “Golden hair, blue eyes, adorable chin, symmetrical features, slender—.” She caught herself just in time.

“Why stop there?” he asked, his gaze fixed on Ella’s face.

“Delightful figures,” she said, tossing her head.

“I fancy your cousin has the advantage,” he said laconically.

The laughter in his eyes was like a physical shock that jolted her body. Nothing but champagne could excuse what she said next. “Fulvia is indeed delightfully curved.”

“As opposed to flat as a gravestone,” her cousin’s future husband agreed.

Ella blinked, feeling abruptly sober. That was just the sort of nasty comment that her uncle tossed off on a regular basis, chiding his wife for being too plump. “Let me make sure I understand you,” she said slowly. “Did you just compare your former fiancée’s chest to a gravestone?”

His eyes were guarded. “Only in comparison to Fulvia’s curves.”

“Our conversation is inappropriate,” Ella observed, putting down her glass. “But since we have already abrogated civilized convention, I don’t mind telling you that your metaphor is coarse, Lord Peregrine. I think less of you for it.”

“It was a saying of my father’s, and I ought not to have repeated it.”

It was just as well his lordship showed his real colors.

Her uncle would have relished that nasty comment. Luckily, Fulvia would be unmoved if her husband started tossing darts at her.

“Surely the interval is almost finished,” she said.

“I apologize,” Lord Peregrine said, rather stiffly. Perhaps Fulvia would be able to train him out of casual cruelty. He didn’t look as if apologies came easily to him.

“You needn’t apologize to me. My bosom wasn’t in question,” Ella said.

They both instinctively looked down.

Fulvia had a nice bosom for someone so slim. Ella was far more curvaceous, and Mrs. Quimby had fitted her bodice in such a way that no one could overlook that fact.

Lord Peregrine cleared his throat.

Ella looked away, knowing that heat was rising in her cheeks. She would die of mortification if he thought she was trying to steal her cousin’s fiancée by drawing attention to her breasts.

But as she climbed the stairs ahead of Lord Peregrine, returning to his box, her commonsense came to the rescue. The man liked a certain type of woman: take the two women to whom he had proposed marriage.

Neither of them was strawberry-haired, freckled, and overly frank.

Lord Peregrine paused in the shadowed corridor outside the door to his box. “I do apologize, Miss St. Trevelyon. My mother would have been appalled, and likely given me a sharp rap with her fan.”