“Well, I wish he’d go and search for the holy grail of poesy somewhere else. All that sighing and languishing. It’s exhausting just watching him.”

“I believe he’s cultivating a fashionable ennui.”

“Bloody hell. Since when was it fashionable to drape yourself over the furniture and spout godawful verse? What is the country coming to?” He shook his head. “Is this the sort of watery whelp I fought hand-to-hand at Waterloo to protect? What happened to British manhood while I was away?”

Georgie bit her lip. “He’s what they call ‘a sensitive soul.’”

Wylde cast Simeon a disapproving glare. “Ten minutes in the Rifle corps would toughen him up. He’d probably faint if he ever had to hold a loaded gun.”

Simeon was still going strong.

“If I were a bee, and you were the clover,

I’d drink of your sweetness and—” He paused, searching for a suitable rhyme.

Benedict leaned in close. “That has to end with ‘and bend you right over,’” he whispered.

Georgie’s cheeks flamed. The man was outrageous. Every time he looked at her like that, she experienced a strange, melting, squirming sensation just below her ribs, not entirely pleasant, but not particularly comfortable either.

Simeon scribbled something, then crossed it out and frowned. Twin lines furrowed his bushy brows.

“Having trouble, Mr. Pettigrew?” she enquired desperately.

“Indeed. I’m trying to find a satisfactory rhyme for ‘lady luck.’ But my muse has deserted me.”

“Thank the Lord,” Benedict murmured.

“How about Puck?” Georgie suggested. “Shakespeare’s character from A Midsummer Night’s Dream?”

Wylde glared at her for encouraging him. Her gaze dropped to his mouth, and the word “suck” popped into her brain. She imagined catching his lower lip between her teeth and—

Stop it.

Wylde was watching her. His lips twitched, as though he guessed the wicked direction of her thoughts. He glanced over at Simeon with a bland look. “Maybe if you go through the alphabet? Buck. Chuck. Duck. Nothing starting with E, of course.”

Georgie wasn’t fooled by his innocent expression. The next letter was F. And she knew precisely which word he was thinking of, even though a gently bred woman shouldn’t. She’d spent too much time around foul-mouthed sailors. They’d bellowed that profanity enough times when they’d thought she was safely out of hearing. A very emphatic, Germanic word.

Wylde bit his lower lip with his top teeth, beginning to form it in slow motion. His eyes twinkled in delight, and he looked like he was about to break out laughing. “F—”

“Gluck!” she blurted out, too loudly. “You know, the German composer?”

Wylde looked comically crestfallen that she hadn’t fallen into his verbal bear pit and made a face that clearly said “spoilsport.”

“That’s not how you say it,” he murmured. “It rhymes with book, not luck.”