Montrose sent Miss Lethbridge a quelling look. “Of course I have been outdoors, m’dear. How else is one to travel to amusements?”
The sly emphasis in the duke’s voice as he said the wordamusementsleft no question as to what he referred to. Even as rusty as Alessandro’s manners were after being gone so long from English shores, he knew better than to allude to Cyprians at the dinner table. Either Montrose had never learned how to behave as a proper gentleman, he was too soused to care, or he was intentionally nettling Miss Lethbridge.
The lady in question’s eyes narrowed to an undisguised glare. “How excellent to hear you have been enjoying youramusements, Your Grace. I am quite gratified on your behalf.”
In truth, Miss Lethbridge sounded rather the opposite.
Alessandro was grateful for the distraction of the boorish Montrose and his betrothed’s prickly friend. Far better to watch the consternation of others than to wallow in his own.
And of his own, he had plenty.
The evening before, he had almost courted scandal by beating the Marquess of Shrewsbury to a pulp for her. No man had ever deserved a drubbing more. Alessandro had arrived late to the ball, having spent the previous evening determined to find the bottom of a bottle of whisky.
He had watched from afar as she slipped onto the balcony. And watched as a few moments later, the marquess had followed her. His legs had taken him to her, eating up the distance. But part of him had been curious enough to linger in the shadows and eavesdrop upon their exchange.
At first, he had not realized Shrewsbury was the man responsible for compromising Lady Catriona. But it had become quickly, appallingly apparent to him just who the man was.
The daring of thebastardo, ruining a woman over a wager and then expecting her to wed him. Lady Catriona should have clubbed the blighter. An answering spark of jealousy had been lit within him. Jealousy he had no right to feel, let alone act upon. Though she was his, their relationship was to be temporary in nature. Just as he wanted it to be. And there had been another instinct, rising like a tide, the urge to feel her lips beneath his. To kiss away her every memory of the arrogant lord who had seduced and betrayed her.
He still did not know the details of his future bride’s ruination. If Shrewsbury had taken her innocence, all in the name of a wager…
Alessandro would duel him after all. He would not rest until thebellacowas as dead as any enemy soldier he had faced in Spain.
The next course arrived, glazed Westmoreland ham and greens. Like every other part of society, Alessandro had forgotten how tedious a dinner and all its courses could be. Soups, removes, entrées, entremets, an endless procession of food and falsely polite conversation, all drowned in wine.
Speaking of which, he needed more. Such dullness was not to be borne without the gentle warmth of incipient inebriation. He quaffed the remainder of his wine, and a footman appeared at his elbow to refill his glass.
Say what you might of Searle, the fellow had efficient domestics.
Alessandro noted then that Lady Catriona was scarcely touching the food on her plate. His gaze lifted to her lovely face. Their stares meshed for a brief moment, and the connection hit him with the force of a blow to the midsection. Already, he felt responsible for this woman.
He wanted to be the man who claimed her, and the man who shielded her from every hurt. He wanted to be the man who made her forget whatever it was that had happened with Shrewsbury.
But how could this be when he was also the man who would leave her?
“Wiltshire,” she said softly.
“It is my country seat,” he offered as it occurred to him he had not discussed a honeymoon with her. “You are displeased at the notion, my lady?”
“No.” A smile pulled at her lips.
The urge to taste them anew hit him, shocking him. Would they be as soft as they looked? Would they part for him? Move in response against his? Surely it was the wine he had consumed which led him to wonder.
He drank some more. “Marchmont was originally built in the sixteenth century, though my father employed an architect to modernize it.”
“I should like to see it,” she surprised him by saying, and still her gaze lingered upon him, searching.
Whatever she was looking for, he did not possess it.
“See it you shall.” He poured a bit more wine down his throat.Cristo, he was turning into Montrose. He returned his wine glass to the snowy table linen with a grimace. “We will stay a month’s time. Perhaps longer, depending upon the state of affairs.”
And how quickly she was breeding.
But he did not say that.
“How very agreeable, Lord Rayne,” said the dowager Duchess of Montrose then.
Since the early stages of his courtship with Lady Catriona—namely the three occasions upon which she refused to see him—the dowager had spoken few words to him. Her expression now was one of intense relief.
