“Perhaps I should leave as well—”
Lord Kittrel interrupted. “Please remain a moment, if you would, Miss Rees.”
She swallowed and nodded. At least he remembered who she was. Though, given the circumstances, she wasn’t entirely sure that was a good thing. Meanwhile, his lordship turned to his sister.
“Clara, can you explain this please?”
“I don’t want to marry Lord Loughton.”
“So you had someone throw knives at him?” Lord Kittrel stepped closer to his sister. The table stood between them, but she still seemed to cringe back from him.
“It was only one knife. I was trying to dissuade him from me.” She lifted her chin, though not enough to fully face him. “You asked me to see him.”
“At a party! At a walk on Hyde Park. Not at…at… what the devil was this anyway?”
Lady Clara turned mulish then, pressing her lips together into a tight frown. In the end, his lordship turned to Lilah.
“Miss Rees, can you explain, please?”
She squeezed Clara’s arm to give the lady encouragement to answer, but when that didn’t work, Lilah framed it in the best light possible. “It was a bit of fun. We were pretending to have a séance, my lord.”
“A séance!”
“Yes, my lord. A summoning of the dead to, um, persuade Lord Loughton that he and Lady Clara would not suit.”
“And you hired performers, enlisted the staff, and put a three-inch gash in my table to do that?”
“Er, yes, my lord.”
He held up his hands. “Clara, couldn’t you have gone on a walk with him?”
His sister sniffed. “Walking is not to my tastes.”
“But throwing knives at gentlemen is?” In his defense, his tone was more exasperated than angry. Still, Lilah felt compelled to soften the implied risk.
“Jamis has many faults, my lord, but he does not miss with his knives. We were all very safe.”
“Yes,” Lady Clara spoke up. “He even practiced several times before the actual séance.”
Lilah winced. That perhaps was not the best thing to say as his Lordship hastily pulled up the tablecloth to reveal five gashes rather than the one.
“Good lord,” he grumbled.
“You said you didn’t like the table anyway,” Lady Clara pressed.
Lord Kittrel flipped the tablecloth back in place. “That’s not the point, Clara,” he huffed.
“Well then what is it?” his sister asked.
He rubbed a hand over his face in frustration. “I had thought that giving you freedom away from Mother would help you settle into yourself. That you would find happiness—”
“I am happy!”
“With your lending library friends doing ghost hunts and fake séances? Surely this cannot be how you mean to go on for the rest of your life. Surely you would like some meaningful task.”
Lady Clara gripped the back of her chair. “I am studying things! Learning things! It is meaningful to me. What is not meaningful is becoming shackled to a man, bearing his children, and cleaning their noses for the rest of my life.”
She slammed the chair into the table with the force of a gale wind. Truly, Lilah did not think the lady had the strength to do it, but the resulting crash startled them all. Especially as she topped it off with a loud pronouncement.