A Most Unladylike Adventure. Elizabeth Beacon

      ‘Please don’t think me artless enough to mistake that for a compliment,’ she countered smoothly, yet he felt he’d annoyed her by lumping her with the more curious of her kind and tried to be glad of it.

      ‘I don’t think you in the least bit artless, I assure you, Miss La Rochelle,’ he said with a cynical almost-smile she didn’t bother to return.

      ‘Clearly,’ she told him, but he thought he saw a shadow of pain in her blue eyes before she gathered up their dirty crockery and bore it off to the scullery.