Cam could not contain his chortle. “We are speaking of the same Miss Grace Winter, are we not? Do you mean to tell me you spent the evening with her?”
His horror was complete. What manner of females were these Winter sisters? They were veritable Sirens, luring otherwise sane men into the rocks with their mere song.
“Damnation, Cam.” Casting his gaze wildly about, Aylesford gripped his arm and began propelling the both of them toward the doors leading to the frozen outdoor gardens. “If we must speak of such delicate matters, let us do it where no one else shall overhear. There are ears in the walls of every country house. Mark my words.”
He could not argue. Just yesterday, he had been the bloody ears Aylesford spoke of. Grimly, he followed his friend into the bleary, cold December day. Overhead, a fine drizzle had begun to unleash from the clouds, lending the air a damp chill he felt to his bones. The heavy door closed with a barely audible creak.
A flock of starlings, unconcerned with the impending winter gloom, took exception to the sound and burst into flight, winging overhead. The gravel crunched beneath their soles as he and Aylesford made their way down a path in silence, their breath puffing clouds into the chill air.
The viscount stopped at last, raking a hand through his dark, wavy locks. “I fell asleep in the library last night,” he admitted.
Cam’s eyebrows rose. “With Miss Winter?”
“Of course not.” His friend scowled. “She made off well before I found my way into her brother’s brandy stores.”
He could not make one whit of sense from his friend’s revelations. “Here, now. Best begin at the beginning, Aylesford. Before the tippling. And the tupping.”
His friend’s jaw went rigid. “There was no tupping, blast you. Grace is my betrothed. Myfeignedbetrothed. Either way, I would not tup her. Listen to you, the Prince of Proper, suggesting I wouldtupthe woman I am going to wed.”
“Grace?” he could not help but to repeat Aylesford’s use of Miss Winter’s given name, prodding his friend, who already seemed as if he were harboring conflicting feelings about the feigned betrothed in question. And truly, he could not resist. It was the distraction he needed from his own stupidity. “It certainly sounds as if the two of you are quite intimate.”
“Devil take it, Hertford.” Despite the sleepiness he had thus far failed to scrub from his eyes, Aylesford appeared genuinely enraged. “I was not intimate with her. I would not dishonor her… Fair enough, Iwoulddishonor her, but I am doing my best not to, in an effort to preserve the lady’s reputation.”
Cam was not fooled one bit. Miss Grace Winter was tougher than a blacksmith’s anvil. “She rejected you, did she not?”
“Fuck.” Aylesford’s scowl turned into a glare. “Yes, she did, if you must know. Let us all revel in the humiliation the great rake Lord Aylesford suffered at the hands of a stubborn, arrogant female whose brother is a glorified factory owner, for God’s sake.”
He could not contain his laughter, but in truth, it was not at his friend’s expense. Rather, he was laughing at the both of them. What a pair they made: the seasoned rakehell and the proper lord, both with their well-earned Town bronze and their knowledge of the finer sex, laid low by the Misses Winter.
“I ought to hit you for laughing at me,” the viscount said ruefully, rubbing his jaw once more. “I shan’t, because I like you far too much, Hertford. And because the dowager would have my hide if word of it ever reached her.”
He caught his breath, wiping tears of mirth from the corners of his eyes. “If it makes you feel any better, I am not laughing at you. I am laughing at the both of us. These Winter sisters are running us ragged.”
“Oh?” Aylesford grinned crookedly. “And which sister is running you ragged, may I ask? Could it be the chit in the red dress? Do not try to deny it, Hertford. I knew it from the moment you attempted to dissuade me from pursuing her by bringing up that hogwash story of Cunningham’s. You wanted her for yourself. You need not have gone to such an effort to keep me at a distance. If you had but said the words.”
The chit in the red dress.
Yes, of course it was Eugie. It had always been Eugie, from the moment he had stepped foot inside Abingdon House and seen her from across the massive hall. He had been drawn to her from the first, although she wastheWinter with the reputation. There was something ridiculously alluring about her.
“Miss Eugie is…” He paused, struggling to find words apt enough to describe the way she made him feel and finding none. “Yes, she is running me rather ragged.”
There were a great many more things he could have said.
Such asI almost ravished her in the writing room just now.
Or,I had her skirts about her waist when your feigned betrothed entered the chamber.
But why bother?
He was having far too much enjoyment at Aylesford’s expense.
“You like her,” Aylesford observed, his tone as serious as his gaze. Almost as if he required a validation that the feelings assailing him, too, were real.
“I do,” Cam admitted grudgingly. “But she is all wrong for me. I could never make a match with a woman such as her.”
Indeed, he had built his reputation upon his strict adherence to propriety. He was always above reproach. Though his friends were rakehells and ne’er-do-wells, he had never made a rustle. Mostly for his mother’s sake, he realized now. She had already endured so much for him, and her constitution could not bear much upset.
“Best to keep her at a distance, then,” Aylesford said, and Cam knew he was not just speaking of he and Eugie, but of himself and Grace as well.
