He extricated himself with difficulty and arrived in the library not fifteen minutes later, somewhat more dishevelled than he would normally like to present himself to visitors. He stood in the doorway, staring blankly at Miss Talbot. Incomprehensible though it seemed, she was indeed here now.
‘Miss Talbot,’ he said at last, without bowing. When he said nothing else, Miss Talbot perceived that while he had risen, his manners had not.
‘Perhaps we could take some refreshment?’ she suggested, feeling that he was in need of some guidance. Radcliffe pressed his lips together, but directed his manservant accordingly and invited her to sit down.
‘I was not expecting your call, Miss Talbot,’ he ventured, recovering some equilibrium. ‘It is also rather earlier than I would expect to receive any call, even expected ones.’
She looked at him in surprise. ‘But it is past ten already!’ she objected. ‘Were you not already awake?’
‘Never mind,’ he said, with great forbearance. ‘Why have you come? I am sure I cannot think we have anything further to discuss, given you no doubt received my mother’s invitation yesterday. Unless you wish to renege on our deal …？’
‘Oh, not at all.’ She waved a hand dismissively. ‘I mean to keep to my end – you need not worry, Archie is in no danger from me any more. But I should like to ask you some questions.’
He cut his eyes to where Sally was perched on a chair by the door, then back to Kitty – a question. She waved him off again. ‘Oh, Sally knows the full, don’t worry. She won’t breathe a word of it.’
‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘You will forgive me if I do not share your confidence. Perhaps she could await us in the hall. Unless you fear I might have designs upon your person?’
He added this with a touch of irony that suggested the idea was ridiculous; she tried not to feel offended. Once the door had closed behind Sally, some of Radcliffe’s hauteur left him.
‘I had rather thought that I had upheld my side of the bargain,’ he said briskly. ‘To see to your introduction and then for you to take it from there.’
‘Surely you didn’t think it as simple as all that?’ she said critically, quite forgetting that she, also, had thought it as simple as all that before Aunt Dorothy had informed her otherwise.
‘Pray forgive me, but – yes.’
‘There is much I need to know about Lady Radcliffe’s event, much that could go wrong, you know.’
‘There is?’ he said, thinking longingly of his bed.
‘Yes indeed. Your mother deemed me an outsider within seconds of our meeting. I must ensure that does not happen again.’
‘And your first thought was to ask me for help?’ he asked, incredulously. ‘Yesterday, each of us tried to blackmail the other.’
‘My first thought,’ she corrected, ‘was to try the library – but I might as well have read the Bible for all the good those silly etiquette books did me. Besides, it is not so strange for me to ask you. I should imagine you would like me to be successful. We do have a deal, you know.’
‘A deal I regret making more with each passing moment,’ Radcliffe said, rubbing his hands over his face and wishing that he had thought to ask for coffee, not tea.
Kitty ignored this. ‘Who shall be in attendance this evening?’ she asked.
‘The Dowager Lady Montagu, her son Lord Montagu, her two daughters,’ he listed through his hands. ‘Lord and Lady Salisbury, Mr and Mrs Burrell, Mr and Mrs Sinclair, their son Gerald, Mr Holbrook and Captain Hinsley, who you have met already.’
She nodded, committing the list to memory to relay to Aunt Dorothy later.
‘When I am introduced to Lady Montagu, how deeply should I curtsey?’
He stared silently for a few moments. ‘Medium,’ he said at last, hoping this would be the end of it. She stood up.
‘Will you show me?’ she asked.
‘Show you?’
‘Yes, will you please demonstrate the appropriate level to curtsey in front of a countess? Clearly, when I first greeted your mother, I did not do it correctly.’
‘But I am not a woman,’ he pointed out.
‘Yet you have seen them curtsey often enough, have you not?’ She waved an impatient hand at him.
Had it perhaps been later in the day, had he been prepared for her visit in the slightest, he might have refused. But he was unprepared, and it was very early, so in the face of such insistent instruction, it seemed altogether easier to obey. He stood and did a passable imitation of a curtsey before a countess. Miss Talbot eyed him critically – it was far shallower than she would have thought – then copied before him.