Kilmuir snorted grumpily, and Ravensworth said, “That was his final year at Eton, no?”
Archie nodded. “He was two years—”
“Three,” corrected Ravensworth.
“Three years above us. Anyway, this barmy little first-year got it into his head that he desperately missed his mummy and couldn’t be away from her a minute longer.”
“In the dead of night,” said Ravensworth.
“In the middle of a freak snowstorm,” said Kilmuir.
“Fortunately for the little bugger,” continued Archie, “Ripon was returning from a late-night tea in the kitchens when he saw the lad escaping into the night wearing naught but his nightshirt, a wool scarf, and a pair of boots. Instead of sounding the alarm, he got dressed and retrieved the boy himself, though it took him several hours because the stupid lad got lost and stuck in a snowdrift.”
“Both spent a few weeks with lung ailments, as I recall,” said Ravensworth.
“But the prefect never found out,” said Kilmuir.
“The head boy did.”
“Oliver Quincy, wasn’t it?”
“Ripon threatened to throttle him if he ever breathed a word.”
“And Ripon didn’t make idle threats.”
“Anyone who ever met him on the rugby pitch knows it, too,” said Kilmuir, unconsciously rubbing his shoulder.
“Like I said,” said Archie, “a legend.”
As if the mere mention of his name held the power to conjure the man, the Duke of Ripon appeared in the doorway. Amelia gasped and immediately felt embarrassed. Still, she only just caught herself before she started gawping. But,oh, the man did have a presence with his massive form and towering height and brooding glower that should render him brutish, but somehow came across as dangerously handsome.
“If it isn’t the old chap himself,” said Archie. “Come, have a seat and a bite.”
Amelia avoided the table’s greetings by asking a servant to set yet another place, this one directly across from her, for that was the seat Ripon chose.
How on earth was she expected to get through this night with that man sitting directly in her line of sight?
Fortunately, she wasn’t expected to make conversation with him as Ravensworth began quizzing Ripon about his support for local building work, which led the conversation toward Ravensworth’s own dedicated support for the arts in both Italy and England, which led to Ravensworth suggesting that Ripon take up a similar interest as he was an artist himself.
“A sculptor, no?” asked Ravensworth.
“Of sorts,” said Ripon, as if the two words had been painfully extracted from him one by one.
The man wasn’t the most sparkling supper conversationalist as his vocabulary seemed to consist of fewer than fifty words. Perhaps he was a brute.
Further, he kept staring at her. She could feel it. His attention made her uncomfortable, to be sure, but it sent another sensation fizzing through her as well—one she couldn’t identify, but the one he always evoked.
It was as though her blood coursed hotter in her veins with a single cut of his stormy gray eyes.
As the lemon ice was being served, Juliet pushed away from the table. “That’s me for the night. I think I’ll see where Delilah skulked off to.”
“Send her my regards,” said Ravensworth.
Amelia’s eyebrows lifted toward the ceiling—who knew Ravensworth could be saucy?—but Juliet remained cool. “I think I shan’t.”
Amelia could grudgingly admit she rather admired that quality about Juliet. She could tell off a duke without seeming to and simply walk away.
Archie dug his watch from a pocket. “If we’re to make it to the Teatro della Pergola before the start of the first act, we must hop the twig.”
