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“why would I ever leave Lulworth?”
    Lady Farnsworth compressed her lips into a tight line of indignation. “Indeed,” she replied, reluctantly recognizing that she was no match for the man.
    Sarah struggled to keep her mouth shut, but a tiny giggle of delight escaped her lips.
    “Are you quite all right, Miss Tisdale?” Lady Farnsworth asked testily, still smarting from Lord Weston’s subtle set-down.
    As she’d done many times before in similar situations, Sarah forced herself to think of Theodore, a beloved spaniel she’d owned as a child. “Actually, I do believe I could not be better,” she answered, the deceased canine having come to her assistance yet again.
    “Lord Weston, do address Constance before she faints from her efforts,” Sarah said hastily, looking at the girl as she held a perfect curtsy.
    He bowed expertly and captured Constance’s hand in his, pressing a firm and lingering kiss on her kidskin glove. “My dear Miss Shaw, it is a distinct pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
    Constance looked at Lord Weston—or rather, the top of his head as he kissed her hand. If she had been delighted to see Sarah again, then the girl was absolutely enraptured over the earl. She blushed from her neckline to the top of her pale blonde head.
    Lady Farnsworth cleared her throat and looked to be making ready to forcibly remove her niece’s hand from Lord Weston’s lips.
    And just like that, the earl released the girl’s hand and rose, looking into Constance’s eyes and smiling as if she were the only woman in the room.
    “Come, Constance,” Lady Farnsworth barked, nodding to the group and ushering her niece away.
    Sarah nearly applauded. “Brilliant,” she whispered in awe.
    Claire gasped, Gregory laughed … and Lord Weston? Sarah could have sworn he winked at her.
    Claire nodded serenely at the earl. “Gentlemen, I’ve need of Miss Tisdale’s attention at the moment. Do excuse us, won’t you?”
    They hardly waited for anyone to reply. Sarah bolted for an alcove while Claire sailed slowly behind, stopping a servant on the way and relieving him of two glasses of punch.
    “That was indelicate, even for you,” Claire professed, handing a glass to Sarah and taking a sip from her own.
    Sarah took one small drink and followed it up with another. “The woman is like a viper—rather more round, mind you, but still, very snakelike. That tongue of hers is deadly. I would not be at all surprised to discover it is forked. And he trounced her—wait, is that what one would do to a viper? Or would one obliterate, perhaps crush?”
    “I would run,” Claire offered, demurely sipping from her cup.
    Sarah rolled her eyes in response. “Tell me that Lord Weston’s skewering of Lady Farnsworth was not a thing of beauty.”
    “I most assuredly would not skewer—”
    “Claire!”
    “Oh, all right,” her dear friend relented. “It was most definitely a sight to behold. I don’t remember the last time Lady Farnsworth retreated from a fight, especially one that she started.”
    Sarah wanted to ask just what the Errant Earl was guilty of that made her fellow residents so emboldened as to eat his food, drink his wine, then thank him withslights. But she could hardly do so without seeming interested in the earl—which she obviously was not.
    “What is it?” Claire asked knowingly.
    Sarah feigned innocence. “What is what?”
    “You want to ask me something but are holding yourself back.”
    Sarah had never had any luck keeping her thoughts from Claire and wasn’t quite sure why she even bothered to try at all. “The thing is, I can’t imagine what Lord Weston could have done to deserve such treatment.”
    Both looked to where Weston and Bennington stood engaged comfortably in conversation.
    “You know as much as I,” Claire began. “His absence from the county has been a hardship for the farmers who work his land.”
    “I suppose,” Sarah answered distractedly.
    Claire delicately sighed.