Page 21 of Caught by the Forbidden Duke
He and Miles had grown up ten months and three houses apart, and across thirty-two years of friendship, Dominic had developed a reliable sense of when Miles was about to say something accurate. He had that sense now.
“Yes,” Dominic said.
“In exchange for piano lessons for your ward?”
“Correct.”
“From Lucien’s sister.”
Dominic looked at him across the table.
Miles raised one hand in mild peace. “I’m making sure I have the picture before I say something you’ll resent.” He settled into his chair casually. “And this was whose idea, exactly?”
“Mine.” Dominic turned his glass once. “James is fond of her. He won’t settle with a new teacher easily. She is next door, she was looking for a match without progress, and Lucien is not here. It was the practical solution to two problems.”
“So that’s why you have taken on a social calendar.”
“I was already attending events.”
“Not as anyone’s guardian.” Miles lifted his glass. “How many of her suitors have you found acceptable?”
Dominic said nothing, and Miles smiled. “I thought so.” He drank. “What is she like?”
Dominic turned his glass. The question was straightforward enough, and he had already prepared an answer, ever since the first evening at Lucien’s ball; a tidy summary that covered the essential points without inviting further inquiry.
Yet what came instead was the image of the way she tilted her head when she was deciding whether to say what she was thinking, the candlelight at the Linwood soiree catching the line of her jaw when she laughed at something her friend said… And the fact that he had been watching from across the room when it happened, and had not immediately looked away.
But these were things he was not meant to be thinking of, so Dominic shrugged. “She is like Lucien’s sister.”
Miles scoffed, shaking his head with a smug look on his face. “You keep saying that. What else?”
Dominic looked toward the fire. “Well…I suppose she’s…capable? Rather too forthright for her own good. At least, she’s good with the boy.” He set his glass down. “She will make someone a decent wife.”
“Someone,” Miles repeated, pleasantly. “No name attached to that yet.”
“Not yet.” He was not going to fall for his friend’s goading.
But Miles seemed to already be having the time of his life. “I knew her a little before I went abroad. Two of Lucien’s events. She was the kind of woman who said what she thought and watched the room rearrange itself afterward. Most of the men in those rooms had no idea what to do with her.” He looked back at Dominic. “And you are watching over this with complete equanimity. No personal interest in the matter.”
“I am doing Lucien a courtesy.”
“Of course.” Miles tilted his head. “It is only that watching over, handling, attending; these things have a tendency to become something other than what they started as, and the person at the center of it is someone you find yourself watching at close range over an extended stretch of time…”
“The arrangement is clear, Miles. Stop insinuating whatever you’re trying to insinuate.”
“Most arrangements are, until they aren’t.” Miles stood and pulled his gloves from the arm of the chair. “She is singular, old friend. The kind of lady who leaves a mark.”
Dominic watched the fire and tried not to think about the way she had squared up to him in the corridor at Silverford House, with James shaking behind her. Or what she had said to the boy in under two minutes that he had not managed in a month.
Or the fact that he had revisited that exchange three times on the ride back from the Linwood soiree.
He was doing this for Lucien. It was a practical arrangement between neighbors. It would last a season, and at the end of it, she would be married, and the whole thing would resolve itself without incident, because he intended it to.
“I am doing this for Lucien,” he said. “Nothing more.”
“Of course you are.” Miles settled his coat. “The Greyton masquerade is next week.”
“I know.”
