Roderick’s eyes caught the motion. “You look as if something has amused you,” he drawled. “Someone, perhaps?”
“No one,” Victor answered. He looked toward the terrace doors. “How have you been, Wycliffe?”
“Idle. Wicked. Improving.” Roderick tilted his head. “Where is the widow?”
Victor considered lying, but it never worked with Roderick. The man did not collect secrets. He noticed patterns. He kept counsel. Those qualities were why Victor had grown to tolerate, and then appreciate, his company. “Gone.”
“Already.” Roderick’s eyebrows arched. “How brisk.”
“Not brisk,” Victor countered. “Concluded.”
Roderick’s grin flashed. “Ah. Seven.”
“Yes.”
“Always seven,” Roderick mused. “The number is neat to look at. I have never seen the virtue of it.”
“The virtue is the ending,” Victor explained. “Clean, civil, with no hope encouraged where none can be satisfied.”
Roderick’s mouth curved. “You speak like a vicar giving a sermon.”
“I speak as a man who prefers order.”
“And yet you have a… look,” Roderick said mildly. “As if some part of the evening had not gone as expected.”
Victor allowed his gaze to drift over the crowd. Masks, silk, light. Somewhere in that mass of prettiness was a woman with a quick tongue and a cooler temper. A woman who had bitten him when warned.
The memory sharpened his senses like cold water.
“The garden was busy,” he admitted.
Roderick’s opinion of busy gardens was generous. “Were you seen?”
“Yes.”
“By whom?”
“A lady.”
“A lady who will talk?”
Victor shook his head once. “A lady who assured me she would not, provided I ceased to pester her.”
Roderick’s laughter was a low, delighted thing. “A woman who putsyouunder terms. I would like to meet her.”
“I don’t want to keep talking about this. The matter has been resolved. She gave me her word,” Victor said.
Roderick’s mouth twitched.
“Anyway,” Victor continued, “ending it with the widow was the purpose of the evening.”
Roderick sobered a shade. “And she understands.”
“She understands very well. It was our seventh night.” Victor let the words hang in the air. “There will not be an eighth.”
“Then you will sleep, and tomorrow you will bully your steward into discovering a tupping schedule that suits your favorite stallion,” Roderick said. “Everything returns to order.”
Victor inclined his head.
