page2 (1/2)

‘Not bad You’re i’

The te off the sphinxoff the ramwas powerful, but she resisted He had a point—she was now eighteen and perhaps it was tie, taking so him down to size in her nified

‘Cousin Huxley believes I aifted He says some of the Sinclairs possess artistic skills Like my Aunt Celia’

She spoke her aunt’s na for him to attack that as well But no doubt the scandal of Lady Stanton’s elopement with a spy and their subsequent demise was too much for him to even consider because he merely sat beside her

‘May I?’

‘Sit? You may This is not my ram, after all’

‘No, may I see your sketches?’

He took her sketchpad with all the care he gave to the shards and reered over a sketch of a wall painting from the te the head of Bastet, the feline god

‘You’ve a good eye for detail There is not one e’

She gritted her teeth, but as he turned she saw the wavering at the corner of his mouth and relaxed a little She could never tell when his peculiar sense of huranite shell there was another Edge, the one as endlessly considerate of Poppy and Janet and hereven when he was doing his very best to scold her

‘Most a if you kno close you ca shoved off on to your posterior’

He frowned

‘That is most definitely not a proper word in mixed company’

‘Posterior? It is a perfectly innocuous word’

‘The word ht be innocuous, but itswhat it alludes to’

‘Your behind?’

‘Sarow up?’

‘I arown up In a couple of months I shall make my debut in Venetian society, be crammed into a frilly dress and have no choice but to behave like a si wrong with speaking of so coh when in your cups—I distinctly rehawazi dancer in rather off-putting detail’

He groaned