Men! As if no one would notice the swelling on his jaw. “People will want to know, nonetheless. I just hope Crouch is all right. I have need of him tomorrow—you did say you left him with nothing broken? Even so, I hope you didn’t injure him so greatly that he is unable to attend to my project.”

Dare had the audacity to look peeved. “You might at least pretend you are concerned about me. He did manage to get in one blow before I knocked him off his feet. And as for this mysterious project—”

“Nonsense,” she said, bending over to examine his jaw. She gently felt around the swelling, then stood back to consider the overall effect. Perhaps if she were to put a little rice powder on the wound, its redness and accompanying swelling wouldn’t be quite so noticeable. “I had no fear that you were in any danger with regards to Crouch. Not only are you an earl, but I have seen you unclothed. It’s quite obvious it would take more than one man to render harm to you.”

Dare looked pleased by her words, although heaven knew she hadn’t meant them as a compliment. Would she ever understand how men’s minds worked? She shook her head in silent answer to her own question. Men were far too illogical to even begin to reason with.

“Your project, Charlotte?”

She sighed. Illogical, and with minds that held tight to only one thought. “Are we back to that?”

“We are.”

“Then we shan’t make the opera because you will be too busy demanding that I tell you about my plan, and I shall be too busy detailing the many good reasons I have to not worry you. Shall I tell Batsfoam to have the carriage sent back?”

“No, you will tell me what it is you have planned. Then we will go to the opera.”

Charlotte sighed again and sat next to him, discarding her gloves and fan. They would not be going to the opera. “Very well, we shall have it your way. We will stay here and argue the evening away when we might be having a perfectly lovely time at the opera. As for what you said, Dare, I would have thought that by now you had learned enough about me to know that when I intend to do my wifely duty and keep life’s many little unpleasantnesses from you, nothing short of Judgment Day will keep me from the righteous and selfless path of marital devotion.”

Dare rolled his eyes, discarding the beefsteak as he stood up and handed Charlotte back her gloves and fan. “Come along, selfless and devoted one. You can tell me what it is that you are planning on the way to the opera.”

They argued all the way to the opera (or, as Charlotte noted to herself, he argued, and she merely remained steadfast in her determination to save him untold mental anguish), they argued on the steps of the opera, they argued their way into Dare’s box, and they argued right through the first two acts of the opera itself, albeit in hushed tones so as not to disturb anyone else. Charlotte had to give her husband credit. He had tried every means possible to extract the information from her, everything from threats of dire, but unspecified, acts that Charlotte knew he couldn’t possibly carry out against her, to pleas begging her to just set his mind at ease so he could concentrate on the pleasure to be found at the opera. Since only a week earlier Charlotte had heard him express in terms not for the faint-of-heart just what he thought of opera in general, she dismissed his pitiful plea as insincere, and warmed herself with the knowledge that she was doing the right thing by putting the need to keep his mental state calm and untroubled against her own desire for recognition of her unselfish acts.