" Stopping before them, St. Vincent confided, “I would have found you sooner, but I was attacked by a swarm of dingy-dippers.” His voice lowered with conspiratorial furtiveness. “And I don’t wish to alarm either of you, but I had to warn you…they’re planning to serve kidney pudding in the fifth course.”
“I can manage that,” Lillian said ruefully. “It is only animals served in their natural state that I seem to have difficulty with.”
“Of course you do, darling. We’re barbarians, the lot of us, and you were perfectly right to be appalled by the calves’ heads. I don’t like them either. In fact, I rarely consume beef in any form.”
“Are you a vegetarian, then?” Lillian asked, having heard the word frequently of late. Many discussions had centered on the topic of the vegetable system of diet that was being promoted by a hospital society in Ramsgate.
St. Vincent responded with a dazzling smile. “No, sweet, I’m a cannibal.”
“St. Vincent,” Westcliff growled in warning, seeing Lillian’s confusion.
The viscount grinned unrepentantly. “It’s a good thing I happened along, Miss Bowman. You’re not safe alone with Westcliff, you know.”
“I’m not?” Lillian parried, tensing inwardly as she reflected that he never would have made the glib comment had he known of the intimate encounters between her and the earl. She didn’t dare look at Westcliff, but she apprehended the immediate stillness of the masculine form so close to hers.
“No, indeed,” St. Vincent assured her. “It’s the morally upright ones who do the worst things in private. Whereas with an obvious reprobate such as myself, you couldn’t be in safer hands. Here, you had better return to the dining hall under my protection. God knows what sort of lascivious scheme is lurking in the earl’s mind.”
Giggling, Lillian stood from the bench, enjoying the sight of Westcliff being teased. He regarded his friend with a slight scowl as he too rose to his feet. "

― Lisa Kleypas , It Happened One Autumn (Wallflowers, #2)