Georgie fought a snort. Her idea of romance wasn’t a man composing her sonnets. Romance was a strong man standing aside, letting her fight her own battles, and only stepping in if she needed help. What would Simeon have done if he’d been faced with Josiah at Vauxhall? Hit him over the head with a poetry book? She suppressed a smile at the ridiculous image. They said the pen was mightier than the sword, but she’d take Wylde’s swordstick over Simeon’s pencil any day.

“I have immortalized the events in verse,” Simeon announced grandly. “I shall read it to you if you like, Mr. Wylde.”

“Oh, God, no,” Benedict groaned, sotto voce.

“That would be lovely, Mr. Pettigrew,” Georgie said with a wicked glance at Wylde. She lowered her voice. “Juliet thinks Mr. Pettigrew is extremely talented.”

He sent her a droll glance. “Yes, but I bet Juliet also thinks rainbows are made from magical fairy dust and that dragons live in Scotland,” he muttered.

“Who’s to say she’s not right about the dragons?”

“Basic common sense? Complete lack of empirical evidence? Zero credible sightings for hundreds of years?”

“There are plenty of wild, unexplored places in the world—”

He shot her a wicked, glinting look from under his lashes and raised his eyebrows. “I have Wylde places you can explore any time you like, Miss Caversteed.”

She fought an answering smile. Really, it was scandalously improper, to be flirting with him like this. Even worse to be enjoying it quite so much.

Simeon cleared his throat.

“O, thou naughty stripy felon,

Round thou art, just like a melon.”

Wylde gave her a horrified, disbelieving look, and Georgie stifled a laugh. She’d been the unlucky recipient of Simeon’s performances before.

“You are a wicked little fellow,

With your stripes of black and yellow.

Your tiny body is covered in fuzz

And the sound you make is ‘buzz, buzz, buzz.’”

Simeon styled himself very much on his hero George Gordon, Lord Byron. Georgie assumed his hairstyle—if, indeed, it could be called a style—was meant to be romantically wind-tossed, but he succeeded only in looking unkempt. Wylde, on the other hand, managed to make the same style look completely effortless. And eminently touchable. She fastened her fingers together in her lap to avoid temptation.

Simeon was in full flow now, waving his paper all over the place.

“I love the way you tilt your cheek up,

I love the way you hold your teacup.

I love—”

Wylde turned to her, a pained expression on his face. “Can’t someone stop him?” he whispered. “Isn’t there enough terrible poetry in the world without some adolescent fool adding to it?”

“He adores the role of lovesick swain. Back in Lincolnshire, he was very taken with the Arthurian legends. Troilus and Cressida, Lancelot and Guinevere. He spent an entire week last summer splashing around in the lake looking for some mystical sword.”