Page 47 of Caught by the Forbidden Duke
Annabelle looked at him. “Who?”
“The other man.” James looked at the door Dominic had gone through, then at her. “Uncle had the displeased face’. Mrs. Greer says he does it every time and always says nothing about it.”
Helena had set her embroidery flat on her knee.
Annabelle said nothing, because there was nothing she could think of to say that would be useful to either of them.
“Can we do the scales now?” James said.
“Yes,” she said with a smile.
Chapter Fourteen
“Tell me about Chesham,” Dominic said.
Miles did not look up from his glass. “I told you about Chesham. In the note. Viscount Chesham. Shropshire. Solvent. Unremarkable on all fronts.”
Dominic was doing his best to keep his impatience from bleeding through to the expression on his face. He did not think he was doing a good job of it, but even that knowledge could not stop him from pushing for more.
“There must be more.” He said, grateful for the calm in his voice despite the ruckus happening within his chest.
“There isn’t.” Miles set the glass flat. “I am not the Debrett’s supplement. I told you what I knew.” He looked up. “Why do you want more of it?”
“Lucien is away,” he started, and Miles’ brows perked up.
He hummed, his lips curving slightly. “You have said that more than a hundred times now.”
Dominic hated it when his friend got smug even before he had the chance to lay his defense. “Annabelle has no one looking out for her interests.” He laid the defense anyway, no matter how hollow it sounded between the two of them.
And Miles was more than happy to shatter those defenses. He said, “She has Lady Rosenhall, who looks out for interests with the thoroughness of a naval engagement. She has Miss Thrupton, who misses nothing. She has herself, and by all accounts, she is entirely capable of managing her own acquaintances.”
Dominic sighed, reaching for any solace he could find in the decanter next to him.
Miles chuckled, “Chesham has called on her four times and attended two of the same events. What would you like Lucien to do about that from Shropshire that you could not do standing in her drawing room?”
Dominic downed a glass of brandy, focusing on the burn as it went down.
“Right,” Miles said, as though the silence constituted an argument he had already won.
“I am looking out for Lucien’s sister.”
“You are.” Miles studied him a moment. The card rooms were warm behind them; some wave of noise had crested and settled. “But your jaw is doing the thing it does when you are trying to pretend not to know something that is already bothering you in your mind.” He picked up his glass, spreading his hands in a gesture of mild surrender. “I am not telling you what to do…just what it looks like.”
Dominic breathed through his nose and turned a narrow-eyed stare on his friend. “I am not jealous.”
“Of course not,” Miles said pleasantly.
Dominic got to his feet.
“Silverford.” He said it without moving. “If there is no version of this in which you are prepared to do anything at all, you are going to be very unhappy watching someone else do it.”
Dominic said goodnight and went out.
The street was cold after the warmth of the club, and he turned without deciding which way.
He was not going to think about Chesham. He was not going to think about the way the man had tilted his head at the mention of Dio Cassius in Annabelle’s drawing room, that careful, unhurried recalculation of a man revising his opinion upward, or the way Annabelle had clocked it and filed it in the catalog she kept of accurate facts about people. Dominic had stood in thedoorway with his hat in both hands and watched all of it. He had not liked any part of it, and he had no intention of examining why.
The man called four times a week. He arrived in a good coat with flowers from a respectable florist and asked about Montaigne, and Annabelle laughed for him, and Annabelle looked interested for him. Dominic had kissed her on a balcony three weeks ago and had not managed a civil sentence to her since.
