Chapter Two
Ash reined inhis mount, drawing the mare to a walk alongside his brother’s gelding. The December air was unnaturally cold this year, making a simple pleasure like riding a rather unenviable jaunt. It was one of the only ways, however, he and Gill could garner even a moment alone to speak to each other candidly.
“How goes the wooing?” he asked pointedly, for he had not forgotten the manner in which he had reluctantly become his brother’s romantic emissary.
Frustrated by Gill’s lack of progress at even managing a simple tête-à-tête, Ash had made a wager with him that he alone could make any lady of Gill’s choosing amenable to marrying him. Gill, blighter that he was, had chosen Miss Prudence Winter. Who also happened to be the lone lady of the gathering who had captured Ash’s interest, even prior to the ill-fated bet.
“No wooing,” said Gill, with his usual brevity.
They were one year apart in age, and as the heir and the spare, they had been raised together. Both had been the recipients of their father’s cruelty and capriciousness. The former Duke of Coventry had been not just a wastrel but a drunkard, and when deep in his cups—which had been nearly every day—he had been particularly brutal to Gill. And Gill had simply retreated to a place inside himself no one else could reach. Social settings such as this one proved especially difficult for him.
Though he had mastered his reactions to the point of appearing blank and cold, Ash knew how much large gatherings and forced interactions affected his brother. Sometimes, the old ghosts returned with crippling vengeance, and Gill could scarcely even utter a word.
Ash had grown accustomed to speaking for him.
As someone who had spent most of his life in his brother’s shadow—the spare only—he had perfected the art of being noticed. Which was proving a boon for Gill, who needed to snag an heiress with an impossibly fat dowry,yesterday. That was, if he meant to save the vast Coventry holdings.
Which, of course, they both did. And that reminded him.
“You have yet to speak with Miss Prudence Winter?” he prodded.
Gill sighed, his breath puffing into a silver cloud on the icy air. “I have not.”
“Have you spoken with any of the females at this curst house party?” Ash asked, suspecting he already knew the answer.
Gill had thus far successfully avoided most of the drawing room games where he might reasonably exchange words with one of the ladies. No Hoodman Blind or Bullet Pudding for the Duke of Coventry, for fear he would be forced to speak or make eye contact with a mere acquaintance.
Their soulless father had scarred Gill all too well.
“One,” Gill admitted, his blue stare trained on the horizon.
“Not Miss Prudence, however,” Ash mused. “It was not a maid, was it? You cannot count interaction with a female if she is a servant.”
“Servants are people,” Gill gritted.
The former Duke of Coventry had not believed so. To him, servants had been vessels for his rage, for his lust. For his verbal lashings. They had existed to serve him, and they should have been pleased to do it.
“Of course they are,” Ash agreed, “but you cannot very well marry a maid, now can you? Therefore, she does not count.”
“I could,” his brother countered tersely.
“A maid with a dowry as large as one of the Winter ladies’?” Ash hiked a brow and gave an incredulous laugh. “No such female exists.”
“It was not a maid,” Gill admitted, frowning.
Promising, he supposed. Unless the lady was already wed. Or not nearly plump enough in the purse…
The suspense irked him. He had been chasing after Miss Prudence Winter at his brother’s behest, and all in the name of their wager, and yet Gill had spoken to a female. “Who was it then?”
“Miss Christabella Winter,” Gill allowed, not a hint of inflection entering his tone.
Of all the Winters, the flame-haired, garrulous one would have been Ash’s last guess.
“The troublesome chit?” he asked.
“She does not seem troublesome,” Gill said, his tone going a trifle defensive.
Interesting.
