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brandy. Empty bottle, you know.” He lifted the bottle and shook it about as proof. Then he sheepishly set it back down again. Really, what was he doing? One did not discuss empty brandy bottles with servants. Unless it was the servant’s job, which it was definitely not for her. Damnation, he was addled! “I believe you wanted something?”
    “Yes, my lord. I am afraid I require payment.”
    “You’re afraid of payment? Well, if that’s a problem for you, you needn’t bother visiting.”
    She paused a moment, her brows lifting in surprise. Then a glimmer of a smile skated across her lips. “Er, no, my lord. I apologize deeply. I misspoke. I have no fear at all in me, and thus I am here at your door asking for payment. Now, if you please.”
    He sighed. Dribbs was right. Best to be done with it. The thing was, what with his father’s recent investment whims and his sister’s trousseau, he was rather tight on ready cash. The repairs and like at the mine alone had depleted the earldom to the point where they all must economize. Add in a bride’s trousseau, and he had no idea where the funds would come from.
    “Really, Mrs. Mortimer, there is a process for this. I have a man who brings the bills directly to me. You need not come visiting—”
    “I have already spoken to Mr. Starkweather. He said I should speak directly to you.”
    He frowned. “The devil you say. Can’t imagine Starkweather doing such a thing. He is usually most officious about his place. Likes to keep the riffraff away from me, hesays. Good man, that Starkweather.” Robert smiled at the empty brandy bottle and wondered when ten minutes would expire. Soon, he hoped. Though he did like the view of Mrs. Mortimer’s bosom, especially when seen through the exaggerating distortion of his empty brandy glass.
    Then he had cause to look up from this glass. Was the woman blushing? Enough that her cleavage had turned a rosy pink? Why, she most certainly was! Extraordinary. Especially since with her figure she must be used to being ogled, and not just through a brandy glass.
    He frowned. Obviously, he was missing something significant, but for the life of him he couldn’t quite grasp what. He set his glass down, pulled in his feet so that he sat straight in his chair despite the way that made his temple throb, and forced himself to be serious.
    “I have had a most trying morning, Mrs. Mortimer. Please tell me why I should talk with you and not with Mr. Starkweather?”
    “Because I am not riffraff, my lord, and never have been.” Her voice was clipped and cold despite the blush that still pinked her skin.
    He blinked. Had he said that? Oh, yes, he supposed he had implied it at the very least. And yet, some devil in him could not resist tweaking her.
    “Ah, well, you certainly don’t appear to be riffraff, Mrs. Mortimer, but you are a bill collector attempting to circumvent my man Starkweather. At a minimum, that suggests you are Riff, if not exactly Raff.”
    Far from deepening her blush, it actually caused her color to cool and her eyebrows to arch. “I can see you have a love of the ridiculous, my lord.”
    “Well, I certainly love my family, and if that is not a love of the ridiculous, then I don’t know what is.”
    She had no answer to that. Good thing, because he really ought not to say this sort of thing to a stranger, servant or not.
    He relaxed backward in his seat, trying to decide exactly what he should do with the lady. Any other day he wouldhave already paid her just to be rid of her. But he found himself smiling at her in an absent sort of way. She was lovely to look at, and she sat there all prim while he spouted all manner of nonsense. It was really quite fun. Until she spoke, her voice low, her manner almost soothing unless one actually listened to her words.
    “Do you know how humiliating it is to come begging for honest payment, my lord? To stand hat in hand before some clerk on a high stool who curls his lip at one merely