The question felt very personal and it made Minty flush. The truth was that she had formed an opinion on Mr. Welwyn. Other than a wealthy businessman, which was what most people knew of him, Minty thought him somewhat... Mean. In a charming way. He wasn’t chivalrous at all - he wouldn’t hold a door open for a lady, or refrain from making a caustic comment for fear of offending her. And this was the key to his charm. Minty found him charming, even though he mostly made her flush.

“You are a man who is not afraid to be himself,” Minty replied shyly. “I suppose when someone is as wealthy and successful as you, they need not care about how they are perceived. You strike me as someone who would not iron the ends of their shirt and make it a fashion.” She smiled sheepishly and looked down, yet feeling proud of her description.

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   Emrys Selwyn

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Her description of him was striking, but incorrect, he thought. Someone who wasn't afraid to be themselves would have had nothing to hide, and he had stacks upon stacks of hidden lives. On the other hand, maybe she was on to something. Maybe everyone had the same sorts of appetites he did, and the respectable sorts — the ones with nothing to hide — were the ones who were too afraid to be themselves. He did care how he was perceived, however. If he didn't, he wouldn't have been at a party like this in the first place, because he wouldn't have found himself even contemplating the idea of marriage.

"Well, it's lucky for the gentleman of England that I prefer ironed shirt ends, then," he replied flippantly, though with a smile he didn't direct at her.

  

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He mustn’t have found her comment very witty. Minty looked downwards awkwardly, wishing she hadn’t said anything at all. “Yes,” she said, not feeling bold enough to say much else.

  

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He probably ought to have left the poor thing alone, because now she was looking down at the ground as though she'd embarrassed herself. His response came too readily for him to simply dismiss it, though, so even if it might distress her he continued all the same. "We make quite a pair, Miss Scrimgeour. You're too afraid of being yourself to have even figured out who you are."

  

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Minty looked up. “H-how could you possibly know that?” She asked with uncharacteristic boldnes. While it was true that she was shy and meek, Minty didn’t think that she was unaware of who she was, or that she was being untrue to some ‘real’ self. She liked peace and comfort. She liked tradition and dogs and posh British things. She liked her books and comfort food.

(She also liked the receive praise and attention and acknowledgment, even if she’d never seek it.)

“It takes knowing a person well to know when they’re not being themselves,” she added more shyly. “What do you suspect I’m hiding, Mr. Selwyn?”

  

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Emrys half-smiled in moderate amusement at her question. "Your glove, maybe," he answered with a suggestive look. "You were quite eager to assure me you hadn't meant to lose it, and so terribly offended when I suggested taking the other one off."

His smile sliding into a smirk, Emrys took a step towards her. This was terrible of him, he knew, but he couldn't resist. He wanted to see how she would react — would she just melt into a puddle at the mere suggestion? He wasn't standing too close, nothing that would have caught the eye from a passerby necessarily, but she could not have missed that he'd closed the distance quite deliberately, and now he was staring directly into her eyes.

"You haven't forgotten the last time we met, have you?"

  

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Minty was mortified but she couldn’t unlink her eyes from Mr. Selwyn’s. Bella’s words from her letter came to mind, that Minty was falling in love.

Was she? Mr. Selwyn made her heart flutter and she wanted the earth to swallow her whole, but she also didn’t want to make a move to leave. Part of her was excited by him crossing her boundaries. She didn’t get to do that with men. She wasn’t the sort of girl to do these things with men... and that was what made it exciting.

She shook her head in a ‘no’, her eyes wide.

“I-I-I didn’t orchestrate this, if that’s what you’re saying!” Minty whispered incredulously. “Do you think I removed my glove myself to-to seduce you?”

  

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Despite the very serious facade he'd put on, he couldn't help but chuckle at that question. The idea that she could seduce him was simply hilarious, to the point where he really ought to have gotten a lot of credit for suppressing his reaction into only a chuckle. He looked her over for a moment, then reached down and took her ungloved hand before she could resist. He held it up between them, her palm beneath his thumb. He curled his other hand and raised it to gently brush the backs of his fingers against her bare wrist. "It would take more than this to seduce me," he responded quietly.

  

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His touches brought shivers all over her body - which she liked. She was so untouched, generally, that even something as mild as this could excite her sensations.

“Mmm,” Minty made, sounding both like she was agreeing with him and like she was inquiring something. “I’ve heard gentlemen like to see ladies’ legs and-uh” She didn’t dare say ‘breasts’.

  

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Oh, she was melting, wasn't she? How delightful.

"Right," he said, with a devious smile. He was still holding her hand between his fingers and thumb, and now he moved his thumb lightly in a circle to carress the inside of her palm. He didn't bother to finish her sentence for her. "But you wouldn't do that."

  

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His touches were bringing shivers down her spine. She somewhat enjoyed the whole thing, as mortifying as it was.

“No! Those things are reserved for my future husband!” Minty stated with a blink. Why men found those particular body parts enticing was beyond her, truth be told. It was just legs and fat pouches!

  

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Emrys raised an eyebrow at the way she'd phrased it: future husband. He knew what she meant, of course — her husband, who presumably she would meet someday in the future — but there was enough ambiguity in the phrase that he couldn't help but poke at it a little bit. He enjoyed riling her up, and it was so easy to do.

"Your future husband," he repeated, adding the emphasis to make the implication he was playing on more clear. "The man is more important than the marriage, then? Who would have guessed it of you," he teased deviously. He turned her hand in his so that he could hold it up, his fingers curled under the side of her hand as though he was about to start dancing with her. He skated his other hand towards her opposite side, where he might have put it on her back if they had really been dancing, but stopped short of touching her, instead letting his hand hover just over the fabric of her dress on her side, at about the place where her rib cage met her breast. "And how will you know when you find him, I wonder?"

  

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Lou made this! <3

Minty didn’t get what Mr. Selwyn was getting at, in all honesty. That she didn’t care about who she married, as long as she was married? This was sort of what was expected of women. There was a bar they had to pass, in Minty’s instance, purity of blood, wealth and reasonably good reputation, but other than that, she wasn’t supposed to be picky. Especially not after three unsuccessful seasons. Pickiness was only a privilege for those girls whose families weren’t steeped in drama and who didn’t bore men to death.

“There’s many gentlemen who could make good husbands,” Minty replied diplomatically, because she couldn’t outwardly say ‘Anyone who is rich and a pure blood’. “But my future husband would show that he wants to take up that role, by pursuing me, as a gentleman should. Ask my brother to court me.”

  

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Had she just really admitted that asking to court was all it would take to get her to play seductress? Surely not. If she was that sort of woman, he must have misjudged her. Of course, if she did want to go seducing men without getting caught up in any of the misfortune that had befallen her sister, she had the best cover for it; she was so chaste and so boring, at least by external appearances, that no one would believe it of her.

Well, regardless. Emrys wasn't courting her, so this little interlude in the garden wasn't going anywhere (not that he had ever seriously expected that it would, his suggestive tone and provocative movements aside). He dropped her hand and took a step back, chuckling. "Well, I hope you find him," he said, shaking his head. "Before someone sees you cavorting around with strange men at garden parties and gets the wrong idea."

  

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Lou made this! <3

Minty flushed, knowing that Mr. Selwyn was right. This was also like an admission of sorts that he would never court her, in spite of touching her and flirting with her. He was old and considered respectable, but in the end he was likely a rake. Perhaps that was why he had remained unmarried for so long, he only liked to toy with women.

“Yes,” Minty replied awkwardly and took some steps backwards. “And I suppose the same should apply for you. You wouldn’t want to be seen with ladies you have no interest in marrying and have people assume you’re courting.”

  

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Emrys let out a brief huff of laughter at her response. "Why wouldn't I?" he challenged, though his tone was light. He thought that might be the best case scenario, honestly; if someone started rumors that he was a rake or a vagabond, at least no one would be sitting around wondering why he hadn't married and suspecting he was sleeping with men. Unless she thought someone in her life might pressure him into courting her if they were seen together, but — well, to be honest, she had few defenders left. Her father was dead, her mother had lost her credibility in high society because of what had happened to her sister, and Emrys wasn't much frightened of her brother.

  

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