“Oh, the usual responsibilities that come with running several estates,” I replied. My right hand had crept off the table, threatening to dance with the offhand remark. To occupy it, I snatched the glass again and took a sip. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed his lip curl.
Another misstep. Beaumont wouldn’t know about such responsibilities. And he wouldn’t take that comment as the distracted nonanswer I’d intended. No, it was a slight.
His eyes narrowed. “I don’t recall Rycliffe having so many demands on his time…” I sensed a trap there, somewhere. But I couldn’t spot it. Parker shifted in his seat, tucking his legs back in properly. Lord, I hoped he didn’t cast up his accounts on the table.
“Well, Gabriel passed before my father.”
My brother hadn’t had any demands on his time. At least not until Celine. And I very much doubted he would have described his wife as a demand. Or, perhaps he would have, but it would have been accompanied by a self-satisfied smirk and an innuendo about precisely how demanding she was.
“Still, he had a wife.” There was something about his tone. I hadn’t evaded his trap but I still couldn’t name it. And I almost certainly couldn’t avoid it.
“Yes.” I fought to keep the trepidation out of my voice, but some must have slipped through because he straightened. Just a touch triumphant. No wonder he always had so many debts of honor due.
“Perhaps a wife would ease some of the burdens on your time. You should consider it.”
“Perhaps I will.”
“Though… I suppose you have.” A self-satisfied tilt crossed his brow. That was it, the trap. My two failed courtships. The rumor that refused to die.
By now, the other gentlemen milling about had abandoned their pretense of conversation. They turned to watch. I could feel their eyes on my back, waiting eagerly for the killing blow.
I hummed with as little interest as I could manage.
“Why do you suppose a wealthy, handsome, titled gentleman such as yourself cannot catch a lady? They should be queued upand down the street for you. Do you need some advice on how to handle a woman?” The question was accompanied by a crude hand gesture. Parker snorted.
I knew what the trap was, but how he was going to spring it remained a mystery. He was unmarried as well—though he’d had more than one notorious affair. He could hardly use that as evidence of some imagined flaw.
“I can manage just fine. Thank you.”
“The trick is to feast on the cunny, drives them wild. You know, the way you mollies do a cock.”
And there it was. Worse than I could have imagined. My nails bit into my palms as my stomach churned with shocked fury.
I wasn’t alone in my astonishment. Gasps from nearby tables served only to increase the drama of the moment. No help would come from that quarter, though, I needn’t even look.
Never, not once, had I wanted to call a man out. But I did now. Desperately. More than I had ever wanted anything in my entire life. Bullet or blade, it made no difference, I wanted to pierce this man’s flesh.
Not recognizing the difference between my present rage and the humiliation he’d intended, Beaumont continued. “I’d be happy to demonstrate the technique on your sister, if you need a practical demonstration.”
I shot up, my chair screeching a discordant symphony against the wooden floor in the breathless room. It caught on a loose board and tipped over in a clattering climax. Dimly, I was aware of another chair dragging against the boards, filling the deafening silence.
My hand had knotted into a proper fist of its own volition and everything inside me wanted to deck him. Forget swords or guns, hang gentlemanly conduct. The only satisfaction I would have was fist on bone.
Ragged, like that of a taunted bull, my breath came and went in great, furious, heaving gulps through flared nostrils.
But I was a trapped bull, caged and impotent. I could beat him bloody and it would do nothing except add fuel to the rumors, turn them from a flickering candle flame to a raging inferno that left nothing but ashes. I might not care about myself, about the title, about the estate. But Mother and Dav would burn along with me and all the rest.
Between gritted teeth I shot the only pathetic retort available to me. “You’d do well to remember that of the two of us, I am not the one who would suffer the consequences of a duel.”
Beaumont’s eyes narrowed, barely perceptible, but I caught the twitch. He wouldn’t make a scene, but my blow had landed. It may have been a glancing one, but tonight he would return to his let house where every single member of his staff would refer to him asMister.
I tossed back the last of my drink before storming off, a furious parry regarding Beaumont’s own familiarity with a man’s cock trapped on my tongue. My shoulder knocked against that of the youngest Grayson brother, gaping in the aisleway on my exit. Nothing could have tempted me to stop, to apologize to the gawker. Instead, I threw the door open and stomped into the afternoon light.
Two
WHITE’S, LONDON - JUNE 4, 1816
TOM
