With This Kiss

helpful tiger didn’t gobble her up. All those plump curves… she would have made a lovely Sunday treat.”
    “Tsk, tsk,” James said, a glimmer of laughter coming into his eyes for the first time. “Young ladies in search of husbands should be docile and sweet. You keep coming out with these appallingly malicious little remarks. If you don’t behave, all those matrons will declare you unfit, and then you’ll be in a pickle.”
    “I suppose that’s part of my problem.”
    “What’s the other part?”
    “I’m not feminine or dainty, nor even deliciously curvy. No one seems to notice me.”
    “And you hate that,” James said with a grin.
    “Well, I do,” she said. “I don’t mind admitting it. I think I could attract a great many men if I were simply allowed to be myself. But pink ruffles and pearl trim make me look more mannish than ever. And I feel ugly, which is the worst thing of all.”
    “I don’t think you look like a man,” James said, finally inspecting her from head to foot.
    “You know that opera dancer you’ve been squiring about?”
    “You’re not supposed to know about Bella!”
    “Why on earth not? Mama and I were in Oxford Street when you passed in an open carriage, so Mama explained everything. She even knew that your mistress is an opera dancer. I have to say, James, I think it’s amazing that you got yourself a mistress whom everyone knows about, even people like my mother.”
    “I can’t believe Mrs. Saxby told you that rot.”
    “What? She’s not an opera dancer?”
    He scowled. “You’re supposed to pretend that women like that don’t exist.”
    “Don’t be thick, James. Ladies know all about mistresses. And it isn’t as if you’re married. If you carry on like that once you are married, I’m going to be terrifically nasty to you. I’ll definitely tell your wife. So beware. I don’t approve.”
    “Of Bella, or of matrimony?”
    “Of married men who run about London with voluptuous women with hair the color of flax and morals that are just as lax.”
    She paused for a moment, but James just rolled his eyes. “It’s not easy to rhyme extempore, you know,” she told him.
    He obviously didn’t care, so she returned to the subject. “It’s all very well now, but you’ll have to give up Bella when you marry. Or whatever her replacement’s name is by then.”
    “I don’t want to get married,” James said. There was a kind of grinding tension in his voice that made Theo look at him more closely.
    “You’ve been quarreling with your father, haven’t you?”
    He nodded.
    “In the library?”
    He nodded again.
    “Did he try to brain you with that silver candlestick?” she asked. “Cramble told me that he was going to put it away, but I noticed it was still there yesterday.”
    “He demolished a porcelain shepherdess.”
    “Oh, that’s all right. Cramble bought a whole collection of them in Haymarket and strewed them all around the house in obvious places hoping your father would snatch those as opposed to anything of value. He will be quite pleased to see that his plan is working. So what were you rowing about?”
    “He wants me to marry.”
    “Really?” Theo felt a not altogether pleasant pang of surprise. Of course James had to marry… someday. But at the moment she rather liked him as he was: hers. Well, hers and Bella’s. “You’re too young,” she said protectively.
    “ You are only seventeen and you’re looking for a husband.”
    “But that’s just the right age for a woman to marry. Mama didn’t let me debut until this year precisely because of that. Men should be far older than nineteen. I expect thirty or one-and-thirty is about right. What’s more, you’re young for your age,” she added.
    James narrowed his eyes. “I am not.”
    “You are,” she said smugly. “I saw how you were flitting about with Bella, showing her off as if she were a new coat. You probably set her up in some sort of appalling little house draped in blush-colored satin.”
    His scowl was truly ferocious, which, rather than alarming her, merely gave Theo confirmation. “At the very least, she could have chosen some shade of blue. Women with yellow hair always think that pink shades will flatter their skin. Whereas a blue, say a cerulean or even violet, would be far more pleasing.”
    “I’ll let her know. You do realize, Daisy, that you’re not supposed to mention women like Bella in polite company, let alone offer advice on how they should