“It would be my honor to do both,” Kingham offered smoothly.
“No, it wouldn’t,” Everett snapped at him. “Be gone. I need to speak with my sister alone.”
King raised a brow, looking like an emperor surveying his vassals. “Your poor darling mother must be appalled by your lack of manners, Riverdale.”
Everett was being rude again, but he didn’t care. The notion of Kingham sniffing about his sister suited him as much as the thought of him attempting to seduce Sybil did. Which was to say not at all, damn it.
“Why don’t you run along and ask her? She’s guarding Lady Eastlake just over there.” He nodded in the direction of the brigade of dowagers who had clustered together. “Mamanhas always liked you. I’ve never known quite why.”
“Riverdale,” Verity scolded him, sounding scandalized. “Apologize to Kingham at once for being so beastly.”
“Beastly seems to be his mood of the evening,” King said pointedly. “He wears it like a poorly cut waistcoat. Speaking of which, old chap, in addition to the stripes?—”
“That’s quite enough of you for one evening, King,” Everett interrupted.
His friend’s expression turned wry as he offered a bow to Verity. “Thank you for a most enlivening quadrille.”
With that, King took his leave, melding back into the throng of guests, though he was a head taller than most of them. Everett turned to Verity, who was scowling at him as if he had just announced his intention to drown a sack of puppies.
“Did you have to behave so abominably?” she demanded. “Kingham was a complete gentleman.”
He didn’t expect her to understand the vagaries of rakes. She had no experience with suitors, save Lord Leopold, and she’d been but a girl freshly come out then.
“Keep your distance from him,” he ordered her flatly.
“He is like a brother to me.”
“But he is decidedlynotyour brother,” Everett growled, feeling suddenly as if all the world had gone mad. “And you would do well to remember that.”
“He’s your friend,” Verity countered, her expression turning defiant.
He ought to know better than to deny his sister anything. She was headstrong and willful. Everett sometimes wondered if he had been too soft with her. Heaven knew she’d run roughshod over him these last ten years, if not longer.
“Yes, he is my friend, but that does not mean I trust him where my sister is concerned,” he told her.
And most especially not where my wife is concerned, he thought grimly, keeping that to himself.
Speaking of which, where had Sybil gone now?
“Then perhaps you might trustme,” Verity told him, hurt lacing her voice.
“Do you not see how impossible it is to trust? Every time I’ve trusted a woman, she has betrayed me.”
His sister’s countenance turned sorrowful. “I think it is you who doesn’t see, brother. I am not anything like Lady Marnham, and neither is Sybil.”
“This has nothing to do with Lydia,” he denied sharply, not wanting to be reminded of the past. Not here, not now, when they were surrounded by so many others. “It is my duty to protect you, and I would be remiss if I didn’t warn you away from a dissolute rakehell like Kingham.”
Verity sighed. “I can assure you that the duke has no interest in me, prurient or otherwise. He was simply being kind because he found me hiding in the alcove upstairs, weeping. He gave me a handkerchief to aid my dripping nose and persuaded me to dance with him as a distraction.”
Worry made his stomach clench like a fist. “You were weeping? Why? Tell me who dared to cause you distress at once. I’ll throw the bastard into the streets myself.”
“That is also what Kingham said. Or something very like it.”
“And I hope you told him that it isn’t done to go about defending the innocent sisters of his friends.”
“I did.”
He nodded. “Good.”
