“Yes,” Roderick agreed lightly. “But you have seen worse. Many times. Without trying to chop their heads off with a quill.”
Victor straightened. “I have not slept well.”
“Lack of sleep has never turned you into this,” Roderick pointed out. “My dear friend, you have become irritable to the point of legend. Yesterday, you left Ranleigh’s dinner like a thunderclap. Today, you have petrified half the peerage. I must ask the obvious.”
“No,” Victor hissed.
Roderick smiled faintly. “You do not know what I was going to ask.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then answer it.”
Victor looked away, his jaw tight. “I have been busy.”
Roderick hummed. “Busy thinking about someone?”
Victor froze. His mask slipped, just a fraction. His eyes gave him away.
Roderick saw it at once.
“I see,” he murmured.
“There is nothing to see,” Victor insisted.
Roderick crossed his arms, studying him. “Thereissomething. You are unsettled. And you areneverunsettled. Ever.”
Victor let out a slow breath. “She said she will be leaving sooner than expected.”
“Ah.” Roderick nodded. “And that bothers you?”
“It is an inconvenience,” Victor muttered.
Roderick laughed softly. “Your voice, my friend, is that of a man who realizes he cannot govern as neatly as he governs everything else.”
Victor said nothing.
Roderick lowered his voice. “You care.”
The word hit him like a blow to the chest.
Victor did not deny it. He could not.
He only turned sharply toward the window, his jaw clenched, his hands fisting at his sides as the truth he refused to acknowledge pressed against his ribs with unfamiliar force.
Care.
He despised the word.
He feared it more.
CHAPTER 12
“Three weeks,” Arabella whispered. “He actually said three weeks.”
“Yes,” Gwen replied, her fingers knotted in her gloves. “He has even named the place. St. Agatha’s.”
Eleanor shut the door to Arabella’s small sitting room with a decisive click and turned the key in the lock. “Then we must speak plainly, and we must do it quickly.”
