He inclined his head. “Of course. I wouldn’t want to make you suffer longer in my presence than necessary.”
She did not rise to the bait.
Instead, she lifted her fork, cutting into her meal. He let the silence linger, watching her.
The candlelight flickered across the fine planes of her face. She was beautiful.
Of course, he had known that from the moment he first saw her.
But beautiful women were not rare in the ton. Women like Isadora, however, were.
To distract himself, he set down his fork and spoke.
“Our lessons begin tomorrow.”
She looked up.
“Already?”
He smirked. “Should we wait? You seemed rather eager for me to learn, sweetheart.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That eagerness is rapidly diminishing.”
He chuckled. “A shame.”
She set her fork down, giving him a measured look. “Very well, then. We shall start them promptly.”
“Though you must tell me,” Evan smirked, “what, exactly, will these lessons entail?”
She pressed her lips together. “How to act the part of a proper duke, of course.”
A flicker of amusement crossed his face.
“Do you find the idea difficult?” she asked.
“No,” he smirked. “You may begin molding me into the perfect gentleman—though I warn you, it is a rather hopeless endeavor.”
“Yes, I imagine it will be.”
Something about the ease of their conversation—the way she had so naturally replied without thinking—made him grin.
Perhaps this arrangement would not be so dull after all.
It might even be entertaining.
“It’s been a while, friend.” Ambrose flashed Evan a smile. The Duke of Warrington had been a dear friend, albeit an unlikely one.
Evan rarely frequented the places in which Ambrose had spent most of his life. Theirs was a friendship forged not in drawing rooms or ballrooms but rather in a gaming hell in London’s darkest corners. Evan had beaten him at a card game, and Ambrose—instead of taking offence—had taken a liking to him instantly. In his own words, Evan had been the first to defeat him in a game inseveral weeks.
The two had gotten along swimmingly since and grown their relationship into a business partnership.
“Has it, really?” Evan ventured, relaxing backwards in the sofa. “I must not have noticed.”
“Ah, my apologies.” Ambrose’s mouth turned upwards into a smirk. “I should have known better. Of course, you have been keeping busy.”
The conspiratorial manner in which Ambrose said the words made Evan give him a side-long glance, warily. “Keeping busy with work, yes.”
“And what of your time when you’re not occupied at work?”
