Her following him here and demanding his attention had changed that.
“What do you suppose?” his dinner companion asked him.
Everett hadn’t heard a word she’d uttered between her lament over the quality of her conversation and the question. He had been too caught up in his own mind. In thoughts of what was to come later that evening when he finally took his wife to bed.
“Yes,” he tried, hoping it was the correct answer. “I agree.”
The lady at his side gave him a shrewd look. “You didn’t hear a word I just said, did you?”
Was he that obvious?
Blast. He contained a sigh of frustration.
“I’m afraid I was thinking about the dessert course,” he prevaricated. “What do you think of the luscious cream ices we’ve arranged for this house party? Whitby settled upon an incredibly talented lady for the task. Runs a cookery school, I believe.”
That was all true. The cream ices that Whitby’s rumored ladylove had created were indeed divine. Everett had never tasted anything quite as delicious.
Outside of Sybil’s lips.
That thought was decidedly unwelcome, so he banished it to the ether where it belonged.
“I especially enjoyed the cream ice and cornets,” his companion said, either accepting his blatant falsehood or willing to forego a reckoning for the sake of polite manners. “I don’t believe I’ve ever consumed anything comparable before. Cream ices are always served in molds. The royal icing and pistachios were a lovely detail as well.”
“Mmm,” he hummed noncommittally, whilst sending another glance down the table in his wife’s direction.
And damn the woman if she wasn’t now flirting with the chap seated across from her at the table, a lecherous bastard if Everett had ever seen one. The man’s gaze was fixed upon her bubbies.
Everett well understood the lure. His wife’s curves haunted him in his sleep. Her shameless gown wasn’t helping matters. If King flirted with her, he was going to bloody well come to blows with one of his oldest, dearest chums.
“Do you know the lady in the blue gown?” his companion asked, a sharp note entering her voice.
He jerked his gaze back to her, guilt making heat creep up his throat. “We are acquainted.”
An extraordinary understatement, that. They were husband and wife. Strangers. Soon to be lovers. Enemies. Once, he had thought she was what he had been looking for, someone to give him the heir he required, to warm his bed, to grant him companionship, someone he cared for. She was witty and her mind was sharp, and they’d enjoyed conversing about everything from the stars to philosophy to poetry, fromShakespeare to Byron and back. Until she had proven him wrong about his opinion of her, and with devastating consequences.
“It seems rather as if you are more than mere acquaintances,” his companion commented before taking a small bite of herharicot verts.
Everett withheld the sigh that wanted to emerge. He was being an arse to the woman at his side. A woman whose company, under ordinary circumstances, he would have enjoyed. Before he’d met Sybil. Before he’d married her. And well before she’d betrayed him.
She hadn’t been the first, of course.
But he vowed she would be the last, damn it.
The Earl of Wharton,seated across the table from Sybil, was dreadfully soused, and the Marquess of Saunders to her left was crowding her with his body. Lord Saunders smelled of hair grease, and he’d been ogling her breasts since the soup course.
The daring cut of her gown no longer seemed like such a fine idea, given her unfortunate dinner companions. If only the sole friend she’d made during the house party, Lady Pink, as she’d decided to call her, given that lady’s requirement of anonymity, had been here to lend a listening ear and a kindly smile. But Sybil suspected that dear Lady Pink had finally ventured off with the duke who had captured her eye and heart. For neither Lady Pink nor the Duke of Richford was present this evening.
Good for Lady Pink, just as long as the duke didn’t dash her poor heart to bits.
It pleased Sybil to think that at least someone had found happiness in this dreadful house party, and none more deserving than her new friend. If only they had confided their true names in each other instead of relying upon their favorite colors and hiding behind their half masks. But they hadn’t, and like so many parts of her life, Sybil regretted it deeply.
Not as deeply as she regretted her hasty marriage to the Duke of Riverdale, of course.
Sybil was persuaded she couldn’t regret any action as much as that.
She’d made a grave error in wedding the clever, rakish duke with the incredibly broad shoulders and powerful frame. He’d been persuasive. Polite. Charming. Most importantly, intelligent. He’d been a man with whom she could hold a conversation and learn something she didn’t already know. He’d been intriguing. He’d listened to her when she’d spoken.
He’d also been diabolically beautiful. He still was, quite naturally.
