When she looked up, Rafe wasn’t at the table. She looked on as he walked to the bar and returned with three pewter tankards, brimming with beer.
“Brown ale,” he said, pushing the first tankard toward her. “Bitter. Porter.”
“All three? You’re very thirsty from your work.”
“They’re for you,” he said. “You said you were willing and able to learn. Let’s see you prove it.”
Ah, so he meant to give her a lesson. That was rather sweet. Ridiculous and unnecessary, but sweet.
Conscious of people watching them, she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Thank you. But I know. I would not propose to open a brewery without first understanding brown ale, bitter, and porter.”
“Then let’s see if you can tell the difference.” He slid the tankards around on the tabletop, jumbling them like walnut shells with a pea underneath. “Taste, and tell me which is which.”
“I can tell you which is which by sight. This is the brown ale.” She nodded at each in turn. “This is the porter, and the bitter. But I’m not going to drink any today.”
Clio could hear Mama’s ghost hitting the floor in a swoon at the mere suggestion. Well-bred ladies drank lemonade or barley water. Perhaps a touch of cordial or a glass of claret. Small beer, at home. They didn’t drink ale. Much less porter. Not in public.
“So you want to produce beer, but you don’t want to be seen drinking it. That makes no sense.”
“It makes perfect sense in a nonsensical world.”
He was a man; he had no idea. Ladies were encouraged to produce all manner of things—beauty, dinner, and children, most commonly. But those productions must appear to be effortless. Drawn from feminine mystery and ether. Woe to the lady who plucked her chin hairs in public, or welcomed callers with flour on her hands. Much less dared to admit desire.
“This isn’t the place,” she said.
“This is a public house. It is, by definition, the place for drinking.” He nudged the brown ale toward her.
Her pride won out over propriety. With a cautious glance about the pub, Clio lifted and sipped from each heavy tankard in turn. “There. I’ve tasted them.”
“And . . . ?” he prompted.
“And . . . they’re fine.”
“Wrong,” he said. “Two are fine. One is swill. How can you go asking farmers to risk their harvests on the prospect of your brewery if you can’t tell good ale from bad?”
She sighed. There seemed no getting around it. “The brown ale is quite good. Freshly brewed with local water. Sweet, nutty. There’s a touch of honey in it, too. Someone had clover growing next to his barley. The porter is decent. The coffee flavors would be richer if they’d used dark malt, not just burnt sugar for coloring. But everyone’s using the light malt these days. Now, the bitter . . .” She sipped it again and tilted her head. “I wouldn’t call it swill. It had potential, but the yeast didn’t dissolve properly. What might have been crisp sky and grassy fields is just . . . swamped in fog. Pity. A waste of good Kentish hops.”
She raised her gaze to find him staring at her.
“Where did all that come from?” he asked. But his eyes phrased the question slightly differently. Where did you come from? they asked.
Oh, Rafe. I’ve been here all along.
Just waiting.
“A girl needs a hobby.” She felt a bit cheeky. No doubt the work of the ale. Or perhaps the expression on his face.
He regarded her with those intense green eyes of his, and even though he was violently attractive and oh-so-close, Clio tried not to do something silly and girlish. Such as touch her hair. Or wet her lips. Or recall the feeling of his aroused manhood pressing against her tender flesh.
Naturally, she did all three.
Vexed with herself, she lowered her gaze. “Are you going to keep staring at me like that?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I’ve a bet with myself. To see if I can make you turn ten shades of pink.”
Well, in that moment he must have counted off yet another. Some muted crimson hue, most likely.
“A man needs a hobby, too.” With a sudden, lethal flash of charm, he pushed back in his chair and stood. “I’ll settle our bill.”
Phoebe leaned toward the neighboring table, where the men were playing cards. “Don’t wait on the king,” she told the man nearest to her, peering over his shoulder at the cards in his hand.
“Phoebe,” Clio whispered sharply. “Don’t. It’s rude to interrupt.”
“But he needs to know.” She tapped the man on the shoulder. “Don’t wait on the king of diamonds. It’s not in the deck.”
“What?” The man looked over his shoulder at her.
“I’ve been watching for fourteen hands now. Every other card in the deck has appeared at least once. With an average of twenty-one cards revealed per hand, the chances of the king of diamonds remaining unplayed would be less than one in . . .” She paused. “One million, three hundred thousand.”
The man brayed with laughter. “There’s no numbers that big.”
“What the devil’s wrong with her?” a man across the table said. “She some kind of half-wit?”
“She’s got more wits than you.” The dealer turned over the remainder of the deck and riffled through it. “She’s right. No king of diamonds. If it isn’t in the deck, where is it?”
Phoebe shrugged. “I’d ask your quiet friend.”
Across the table, a burly, ginger-haired man scowled. “Keep your nose out of men’s business, girl.”
Clio tried to distract her sister, to no avail. When Phoebe latched on to a fact, she could be like a dog with a bone.
“There.” She nodded toward the man with ginger hair. “It’s in his left sleeve. I see the edge of it.”
Now the man rose from the table, looming over them all. “Are you calling me a cheat, you little wench? Because if you are, I won’t stand for it.”
He grabbed the tabletop’s edge with both hands and flipped the entire table, cards and beers and all.
Clio gathered her sister into her arms. Phoebe stiffened at the contact, but it couldn’t be helped. She would not let this man hurt her sister.
“Lying, unnatural witch,” he snarled. “I tell you, I’ll—”
Rafe stepped in, confronting the man chest to chest. His voice was a low, controlled threat. “You’ll stop. That’s what you’ll do. Because if you touch or threaten either one of these ladies again, I swear on everything holy, I will kill you.”